Orwell: 2+2=5

Orwell: 2+2=5 nods to one of Nineteen Eighty-Four’s most chilling ideas rather than the novel’s title itself – a welcome twist, given how often “1984” is brandished as shorthand for everything and nothing these days. By choosing the equation instead, Raoul Peck signals that this isn’t another dust-off of Orwell’s greatest hits, but an inquiry into how his warnings have curdled into the air we now breathe.

Narrated by Damian Lewis, the documentary weaves biography into political study. Peck moves briskly through Orwell’s years in Burma, his injuries in Spain, and his wartime journalism, grounding each in manuscripts and letters that reveal the evolution of his life and politics. It culminates, inevitably, with a sickly Orwell hammering out his most famous work a year before dying of tuberculosis in 1950, aged 46. Lewis’s velvety voice lends the story a clean, almost soldierly cadence, while Alexei Aigui’s sombre score brings gravitas without sentimentality.

There is no illusion of subtlety here, yet Peck’s repetition of ideas – truth, propaganda, the perversion of language – can sometimes feel heavy-handed. Perhaps that’s the point: life, as Orwell understood, is repetitive, and lies require constant maintenance. The film’s looping structure mirrors that exhausting cycle.

Some choices are harder to defend. The close-up shots of tuberculosis bacteria and the rasping breaths threaded through the soundtrack – possibly intended to evoke Orwell’s death sentence or the anxiety that lingers in a post-pandemic world – land awkwardly, feeling overly clinical. More bizarre still is Peck’s use of AI-generated imagery to illustrate disinformation. The choice might be self-aware, but it directly contradicts the very ideas about the manipulation of truth the film seeks to uphold.

Ultimately, Orwell: 2+2=5 never achieves the precision or emotional voltage of Peck’s I Am Not Your Negro, where Peck’s critique of James Baldwin burned as brightly as the film’s form. This is a quieter, more scattered work, driven less by revelation than by recognition. Still, its relevance is undeniable. In an age that bends truth until it fits the headline, Peck reminds us that Orwell’s grim arithmetic was never just fiction.

Christina Yang

Orwell: 2+2=5 does not have a release date yet.

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Watch the trailer for Orwell: 2+2=5 here: