Orwell: 2+2=5

Watched it recently at a film festival. Go see it if you don't mind a tedious preachy clip show of historical footage with frequent bland voiceovers narrating Orwell's words, often with the background of a slow-moving vista of dull dreary Scotland. This sort of work comes off as a naive high school politics student trying to be original and edgy, since the film goes down the same predictable politically one-sided narratives (complete with sentimental instrumental soundtrack). Essentially a sophomoric propaganda piece with stale observations about government power that are already known by anyone familiar with Orwell's main works. Couldn't take it anymore, and we walked out near the end.

Edit: on second thought, I give it 2 stars instead of 1. The part about Orwell's time in Burma was mildly interesting.

What a load of garbage. Was so looking forward to this, I actually bought it. Damn wish I could get my money back. 100% not a true representation of Orwell at all. I would rather watch CNN at the airport. Orwell turned over in his grave. This documentary was produced by big brother. Do not waste your time.

Had high hopes for this movie to examine Orwell's thoughts on political systems and regimes with in-depth focus on parallels to modern day "newspeak" and breaking of collective willpower, but it does none of that. It's a series of sometimes no context images of death and dictators and Adobe Affect Effects text animations that are played along with snippets from his diary about his life. It does give more context about his writing, but no context for the historical events it shows or why it chooses to focus so heavily on Burma. It doesn't bring in any other historians or political analysts until the end and it's very brief and superficial. It primarily felt like I was watching a collection of movie clips of 1984 versions. Overall, I appreciate the subject matter and the recency of the content (e.g., the inclusion of the Gaza genocide and the MAGA ambivalence towards death for "the other team") but the movie wasn't as thought provoking as I was hoping and felt more like SparkNotes to 1984 for a Gen X audience, nothing groundbreaking if you've already read 1984 and have a basic understanding of politics and injustice.

I was ready to give this a chance, after all I turned up to see it at the London Film Festival with the director present. He had clearly done a lot of archival work and the opening sections were fair enough, Orwell's letter and diaries being accompanied by fine shots of Jura and great photos. But after half an hour the director then started to try something more ambitious and the whole thing fell apart as he bombarded us with the newsreel footage and footage from adaptations of 1984 that he thought would enhance the power of Orwell's words. Sadly if anything they diluted them.

Two massive howlers. First, the scenes from 1984 in which Big Brother is adored by a crowd are followed by people at the republican convention cheering Trump. But the latter is really pretty standard practice at party rallies in multi party democracies. That is not what Big Brother is about. Second, the director addresses what he takes to be today's version of newsspeak by taking a series of cliched expressions or euphemisms, but instead of unpacking them, he simply translates them into what he thinks they really mean, which he expressed on screen with a phrase of his own. The effect of all this is that the film is in the end a simplistic mess, like a not very good imitation of Adam Curtis.

I would have given it a 6.5 if that had been possible. I really appreciated Orwell's works and had high expectations for this film. I consider myself center-left, but I found it too one-sided, underdeveloped, and overly fatalistic. It can feel quite anxiety-inducing... I understand that we shouldn't bury our heads in the sand, but at this point it starts to verge on pure sensationalism. The selected clips are very suggestive for example, they only show the best quotes and moments from people on the left, and then one of the worst moments from someone on the right. I generally disagree with Zuckerberg's main ideas, but he's not some demonic idiot either.. in the film, he's constantly shown at his worst moments.