‘Orwell 2 + 2 = 5’ Review: A Chilling Examination of How Much the Nightmare of ‘1984’ Has Come True

On January 8, 2021, Donald Trump Jr. took to X (then Twitter) to declare that his father’s suspension from the platform was a sign that “We are living in Orwell’s ‘1984.’ Free speech no longer exists in America.” The irony that the elder Trump’s actions leading to the ban — spreading false information that the 2020 election was rigged on the platform and directly causing an attempted insurrection of the U.S. Capitol building — fit far more into George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel and its vision of a future ruled by misinformation and propaganda is one that Jr. was seemingly entirely unaware of. It was a sign of how, in spite of the cultural ubiquity the short, pioneering 1949 science fiction novel has obtained — introducing terms like “Big Brother,” “doublethink,” and “thoughtcrime” into the cultural lexicon and remaining a staple of high school curriculums in its native Britain and across the pond in the United States — a frighteningly large amount of people seem incapable of processing what Orwell’s vision of a future ruled by fear, surveillance, and a controlling superstate actually means, and how close to home it hits in our current political landscape. Peck, a Haitian filmmaker whose work has always had a strong political bent, is best known for his 2016 essay film “I Am Not Your Negro,” which uses the unfinished James Baldwin manuscript “Remember This House” as the skeleton for an examination of the deaths of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr. “Orwell” plays like a spiritual successor to his Oscar-nominated breakthrough, mixing Orwell’s writings and letters — narrated by “Homeland” star Damian Lewis — with archival photographs, footage from various adaptations of “1984” (including the 1956 version starring Edmund O’Brien as bureaucrat Winston and the version starring John Hurt released on the actual year), footage from other movies ranging from “Oliver Twist” to “Notting Hill,” and modern day news reports to argue how Orwell’s fears of a totalitarian state have already come true.

Author: Wilson Chapman

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