Orwell: 2+2=5

Bluesky

It’s almost 80 years since George Orwell’s dystopian classic 1984 was published, but the tale of the hapless Winston Smith living in a world of doublethink, newspeak and Big Brother has continued to resonate, with each new generation finding fresh applications for the totalitarian ideas, which, sadly, never seem to go out of fashion. For that reason, it’s also been popular for adaptation, spawning numerous radio versions, at least three television incarnations and two major (along with more minor) films – Michael Anderson’s in 1956 and Michael Radford’s John Hurt-starrer in 1984 itself.

With his latest essayistic documentary Raoul Peck interweaves a consideration of 1984’s echoes and resonance with a survey of George Orwell’s biography – illustrated partially by John Glenister’s TV film Crystal Spirit: Orwell on Jura – with a particular focus on the period when he wrote the book while increasingly sick with tuberculosis.

Throw in some Animal Farm elements for good measure and it adds up to an awful lot for one film to attempt to navigate. Peck is no stranger to taking on complexity, proving very successful with his essay film I Am Not Your Negro, about James Baldwin, but though he again offers food for thought, it’s in the realm of a slightly ungainly and sprawling all-you-can-eat buffet rather than a satisfying sit-down feast. It’s also not helped by the portentous narration from Damian Lewis, who delivers a lot of Orwell’s own writing in the first person – the ideas Orwell articulates ring clear as a bell and don’t need doom-laden trappings to be effective.

Orwell, born Eric Blair, knew a thing or two about enforced rules and social control having been born in India, which was then under colonial rule and educated at Eton before going to work as a police officer in what was then Burma (now Myanmar) and part of the Raj. “In order to hate imperialism, you have to be part of it,” he later noted. The other thing Orwell was acutely aware of was the power of words; if anything modern politicians from the likes of Donald Trump, Javier Milei, Benjamin Netanyahu and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan down to the much more common or garden Liz Truss and Nigel Farage have taught us it’s that the world is being constantly encouraged to “reject the evidence of its eyes and ears”

Peck’s rangy approach shows just how widespread euphemism is, one regime’s “strategic bombing” is another one’s “peacekeeping” and a third’s “collateral damage” but they all tend to add up to a lot of dead innocent citizens. This comparison of global occurrences is a key to Peck’s film, which often juxtaposes destruction or soundbites from different places to make his point.

That buffet approach keeps repeating itself, however, so we get a nibble of Orwell as a volunteer fighter for the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) in the Spanish Civil War here and a bitesize chunk of his life with wife Eileen there, while being asked to fill up on hard to digest statistics. But if Peck’s approach risks overdelivery in some areas while being underpowered in others it is likely to engender a curiosity to read more of Orwell’s work.

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