Producers: Alex Gibney, Raoul Peck, George Chignell and Nick Shumaker Director: Raoul Peck Narrator: Damian Lewis Distributor: Neon
Grade: B-
In an essay on fascism that he might actually have written (or at least approved for publication), Benito Mussolini observed that “if the nineteenth century was a century of individualism it may be expected that this [the twentieth] will be the century of collectivism and hence the century of the State,” i.e., of authoritarian government, whether of the left or the right. The prospect obviously weighed on the mind of Eric Arthur Blair, the British writer who, using the pen name George Orwell, wrote two novels, “Animal Farm” (1945) and “1984” (1949), warning about the dangers of totalitarianism.
The message of Raoul Peck’s film is that perhaps Mussolini was correct, just off by a century, and that Orwell’s books are more relevant than ever.
To that end Peck, whose “I Am Not Your Negro” (2017) was an exceptionally probing intellectual biography of James Baldwin, divides his film into two parts. The larger of them is a biography of Orwell that comes very close to being autobiographical, since it proceeds largely through excerpts from his letters and memoirs spoken by Damian Lewis. These are heard over scads of archival footage and stills, which are occasionally supplemented by dramatic recreations, like an opening sequence derived from John Genister’s “The Crystal Spirit: Orwell on Jura” (1983), and by clips from multiple film versions of Orwell’s two famous books. He even reaches back to a 1953 TV version of “1984” starring Eddie Albert and Lorne Greene, as well as the better-known films with Edmond O’Brien and John Hurt.
In the voiceover excerpts, Lewis’ Orwell explains how the British class system impacted his youth, making him acutely aware of his social status, and led to the service in the India Imperial Police in Burma that gave him personal experience—and a deep loathing—of the reality of authoritarian oppression, a perspective further deepened by his service in the Spanish Civil War. He brought that attitude to his later writing as a journalist and novelist, believing that fiction necessarily carries a political component.
The biographical portion of the film also concentrates on his family life, itself not without tragedy, and the struggle with tuberculosis that overshadowed his later years.
The second section of the documentary ties Orwell’s insights about politics—especially the maxims and methods of the Oceania regime led by the figure known as Big Brother—to real-world events, not just of his era but down to the present. Peck collects montages of authoritarian leaders of our own time, from Putin, Trump and Xi Jinping to Viktor Orbán and others of their kind, to argue that the triumph of totalitarian regimes such as Orwell had warned about—and Mussolini had applauded—is coming to pass, if it hasn’t already occurred.
This is hardly a unique view, and it’s arguable that Peck’s presentation of it is overly blunt and obvious. It can also be observed that shuffling between the points Peck wants to raise in the two portions of the documentary results in a good deal of repetition. Watching essentially the same material in no fewer than three films of “1984,” for instance, can feel cumbersome.
But “Orwell: 2+2=5” is nonetheless worth watching if only for its impressive collection and presentation of data about Orwell’s life and how he saw it as shaping his political views. His observations about the British class system, which still plays an important part in society, and the legacy of colonialism are incisive and worth contemplating.
The film is slickly if not always smoothly edited by Alexandra Strauss, and Alexeї Aїgui’s score is effective. A battery of cinematographers—Julian Schwanitz, Ben Bloodwell, Stuart Luck, Aera, Maung Nadi, Roman T—has done its work well.
Peck may not bring startling revelations to the conversation about the meaning of Orwell’s two best-known works, but he offers a crisp, convincing portrait of the intellectual journey that led to his writing them.