{"id":199048,"date":"2025-10-09T02:32:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-09T02:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/199048\/"},"modified":"2025-10-09T02:32:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T02:32:09","slug":"urgent-but-uneven-documentary-orwell-2-2-5-doesnt-quite-add-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/199048\/","title":{"rendered":"Urgent but uneven documentary Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5 doesn\u2019t quite add up"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

George Orwell in the documentary film Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5.Elevation Pictures<\/p>\n

Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5<\/p>\n

Directed by Raoul Peck<\/p>\n

Classification N\/A; 119 minutes<\/p>\n

Now playing in select theatres <\/p>\n

After last year\u2019s Ernest Cole: Lost and Found, documentary veteran Raoul Peck<\/a> returns with another sociopolitical exploration of history and its relation to the present. His focus this time, with the aptly titled Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5, is the historical reverberations of the life and work of English writer George Orwell.<\/p>\n

For Peck, fascism through the ages is the lens through which he presents the work of Orwell, beginning with the novelist\u2019s birth in Motihari, India, in 1903, where he was tended to by an unnamed Indian nursemaid. It\u2019s a biographical and archival detail that bookends the film, underscoring Peck\u2019s quotation of Orwell himself: \u201cTo abolish class-distinctions means abolishing a part of yourself.\u201d <\/p>\n

Segmented using titles sourced from 1984\u2018s doublethink \u2013 war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength, Peck\u2019s political vision here is much like that of his previous work: staunchly anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian, as well as ever conscious of the further striating quality of identifiers such as race, ethnicity, gender, religion and class. <\/p>\n

Utilizing a selection of Orwell\u2019s writing alongside biographical details of his life (for example, his political radicalization after his role in the British Army\u2019s occupation of Burma), narrated by English actor Damien Lewis, Peck traces a kaleidoscopic web of totalitarianism through time, from British colonial rule to America under President Donald Trump \u2013 the latter, alongside Russia\u2019s Vladimir Putin and Hungary\u2019s Viktor Orb\u00e1n, forming a particularly impactful example of the way authoritarianism utilizes the twin forces of language and capital to undermine objective truth.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a dizzying tour of the acts by allied states to oppress their most vulnerable, with Peck sourcing footage from the past five years in particular as an act of both witnessing and emphasizing the urgency of such events. Peck is, if anything, determined to cast our gaze back to the stark realities and hypocrisies of our current world order. <\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

A still from Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5.Elevation Pictures<\/p>\n

Likewise punctuated by a slurry of cinematic references, including, of course, most screen adaptations of Orwell\u2019s work, as well as politically lockstep films such as Steven Spielberg\u2019s Amistad and the work of Ken Loach \u2013 hell, there\u2019s even a reference to the viral horror flick M3GAN in Peck\u2019s closing chapter. <\/p>\n

Peck also uses artificial intelligence to bolster his meta commentary on the loss of truth in our political present \u2013 a creative decision that feels off in tone, even if clear in intent, given the vision of the film.<\/p>\n

Despite its unevenness at times, Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5 is a sprawling work that offers itself as a frightening historical record. Indeed, it is perhaps the most soberingly didactic of Peck\u2019s works, offering a crash course in fascism\u2019s multiple lives, means and methods throughout the past century.<\/p>\n

Special to The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: George Orwell in the documentary film Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5.Elevation Pictures…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":199049,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,75,337,2922],"class_list":["post-199048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-noastack"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199048\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}