In the last months of his life, writer George Orwell used the final embers of his energy to complete a novel that would become a classic of 20th century literature: 1984. More than 75 years after its publication, the book that introduced readers to Big Brother, “Newspeak,” “Thought Crime,” “unperson” and more concepts remains urgently relevant to our own times.
Orwell: 2+2=5, the new documentary from Oscar-nominated filmmaker Raoul Peck, explores the British author, his background of some privilege (Orwell described himself as hailing from the “lower-upper-middle class”), and the experiences abroad that made him acutely sensitive to class and power dynamics. It screens at the Camden International Film Festival in Maine Saturday evening after holding its North American premiere just days ago at the Toronto International Film Festival.
“It’s catching the author at the moment of his life where there is a dramatic development, where there is a tension… Orwell, in the last year of his life, trying to finish 1984, knowing that he will probably die toward the end of the year and in out of sanatoriums,” Peck explained as he came by Deadline’s Toronto Studio. “There is a constant tension about is he going to finish it or not, and how. He doesn’t even have a title yet, hesitating [between] different titles. So that’s the backbone, I would say, of the film itself.”
George Orwell, 1903-1949
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When the novel came out in June 1949 (Orwell would die of tuberculosis at age 46 only a few months later), it was immediately perceived in the U.S. as a brilliant indictment of the Soviet system – its brutal Stalinist purges and insistence upon strict adherence to Marxist-Leninist doctrine. But different camps tried to co-opt the book, Peck noted, “both the East, the West, both the communists and the capitalists. But Orwell was always bigger than that. He’s somebody who had a really very universal view of what power is, no matter what kind of power, no matter who’s holding power. And he always criticized the abuse of power, injustice, et cetera, from whatever corner it’s coming from.”
Orwell: 2+2=5 demonstrates how the film speaks to today by showing examples of authoritarians or would-be authoritarians manipulating language to deceive and disorient their people. In one snippet in the film, Pres. Trump, sometime following the January 6 insurrection, calls the violent uprising a “day of love.”
“People are constantly trying to persuade you what you are seeing is not what you are seeing, what you are hearing is not what you are hearing,” Peck observed. “And yes, that’s the equivalence of two plus two equals five.”
Neon
Neon will release the documentary in U.S. theaters beginning October 3.
“It’s an important moment for us to have a direct confrontation with an audience because this film has been made to be seen in the theater and not for primarily TV,” the filmmaker said. “I think it’s an important [experience] for people to live through those words, to live through those analyses and that relate you to what’s happening today, not only in the U.S. or in Canada, but also unfortunately in the rest of the world.”
In our full conversation, Peck also speaks about how his childhood in Haiti and part of his youth spent in Congo taught him the realities of living under dictatorship. Click above to watch it.
The Deadline Studio at TIFF is hosted at Bisha Hotel and sponsored by Cast & Crew and Final Draft.