Raoul Peck’s documentary about George Orwell and his enduring relevance takes as its keynote the heretical masterpiece Nineteen Eighty-Four and its famous scene about the state compelling people to believe whatever it says is the truth: that two and two make five. That Orwellian anti-arithmetic of tyranny has become a political meme often repeated in social media debates about gender politics, although these are not mentioned here, perhaps because they are not considered sufficiently important. This is a serious and worthwhile film, though one that tells you what you know already, and yet somehow perhaps doesn’t tell you enough.
The simple experience of hearing Orwell’s prose, both from his published work and letters and diaries, read aloud by Damian Lewis, is invigorating and refreshing. There’s an interesting emphasis on Orwell’s physical frailty, with him effectively composing his masterwork in the shadow of death. It was written, as he put it, “under the influence of tuberculosis”. That such a fierce, muscular, assertive book should be conceived under this influence is a startling thought, and Peck amusingly juxtaposes Orwell’s sickness with Winston Smith being made to do exercises and the infatuation of tyrannical regimes with public displays of physical fitness. Perhaps it is truer to say that Nineteen Eighty-Four was written under the influence of cigarettes and their unregretted consequences.
