{"id":496931,"date":"2026-03-26T19:37:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T19:37:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/496931\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T19:37:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T19:37:13","slug":"225-review-a-bitter-howl-at-injustice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/496931\/","title":{"rendered":"2+2=5 review \u2014 ‘A bitter howl at injustice’"},"content":{"rendered":"

A documentary which filters modern geopolitics through the work of the British author behind Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom the totalitarian point of view, history is something to be created rather than learned.\u201d So wrote novelist, essayist, and journalist George Orwell in 1946, as he was gathering ideas for what would become his final book, the dystopian and depressingly prescient Nineteen Eighty-Four. Eighty years later, with Orwell\u2019s warning a bleak reality, documentarian Raoul Peck (I Am Not Your Negro<\/a>) investigates how the writer came to predict the future, and how shockingly accurate those predictions were.<\/p>\n

\"Orwell<\/p>\n

If it\u2019s an Orwell biography you\u2019re after, look elsewhere. Peck provides only the minimum background information required to understand where Orwell was coming from. Instead, he leans heavily into drawing parallels between the ideas contained in Animal Farm, Nineteen Eighty-Four, and various essays, and the methods of 20th-century leaders who\u2019ve pushed their agendas through lies, corruption, suppression and state-sanctioned violence. Orwell\u2019s words, delivered with weighty gravitas by Damian Lewis, are set to news footage and clips of movies and documentaries from around the world to highlight a post-truth present enabled by unregulated social media and a global ruling class greedy for power and control.<\/p>\n

Peck, like Orwell, wants you to question and interrogate what you see and hear from those in power.<\/p>\n

The format is strong and convincing: Peck\u2019s choices are laser-focused, and many of the cuts between fictional films and news footage illustrate a sickening similarity. Big Brother\u2019s anti-Eurasia broadcast, for example, flows into justifications for invasions by George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin so seamlessly, it\u2019s hard to tell where fantasy ends and reality begins. The use of language, so close to Orwell\u2019s heart, is also effectively examined, with doublespeak phrases like \u201cspecial military operation\u201d and \u201cpacification\u201d called out for what they really mean. Peck, like Orwell, wants you to question and interrogate what you see and hear from those in power.<\/p>\n

This, however, is where the film fumbles a little. There\u2019s no doubting where on the political spectrum Orwell: 2+2=5 sits, so you know what you\u2019re getting here. But even as Lewis speaks Orwell\u2019s words about questioning your own side as thoroughly as you would the other, Peck offers no criticism of a liberal viewpoint. Left-wing politicians are conspicuous by their absence, escaping the film\u2019s anger as if they made no contribution to our Orwellian present. There\u2019s also a nagging feeling that none of this is new: it\u2019s hardly original to say that we seem to be living inside Orwell\u2019s nightmare visions these days. And the film offers little hope beyond a last-minute call for resistance. If you, like so many, feel overwhelmed and powerless right now, this might not be the feel-good movie<\/a> for you.<\/p>\n

A bitter howl at the injustice of the modern world, intellectualised through one of literature\u2019s shrewdest figures. Powerful and eye-opening, but Orwell himself might have preferred a less partisan approach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A documentary which filters modern geopolitics through the work of the British author behind Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":496932,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-496931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=496931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496931\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/496932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}