Orwell: 2+2=5

Saw this at a film festival. This is some sort of a biography of Eric Arthur Blair (AKA George Orwell) through some of his letters. That part is quite interesting, I learned a few things but basically it's data you can find on wikipedia.

The movie tries to draw a relation between his life and the writing of his major and last book: 1984. It rely heavily on previous adaptations which is quite annoying (make new with old). But IMO the real weak point of the movie is its failure to implement Orwell's ideas into our contemporary world.

The movie takes a strong partisanship side and doesn't question itself about it (basically: billionaires are too rich, chinese military parade are scary, we live in a democracy that needs to be saved from tyranny). It somehow felt like propaganda: we've been at war with Oceania the whole time, and you shouldn't question about it.

I was quite surprised of the absence of certain events that were a very good exemple of Orwellian dystopia in the last few years: how can you make a movie about Orwell in 2025 and not a single word about covid? It was a period of heavily censored information, where anything out of the unique doctrine was considered heresy, tens of newspeak words, constant rewriting of history, with the ultimate goal being to comply with restrictions rules. Covid is literally the elephant in the room.

Add a few shots of poor people in their environment facing the camera with great lighting for emotional value, and more than 10 years old interview of Edward Snowden, you end up with old footage sold as new with missed analysis.

I guess the upside would be to draw curiosity for the book for the viewers who haven't read it yet.

If the intention was to present a "shrill trumpet-call" in imitation of an Inner Party-directed Hate Week project, then mission accomplished.

The narrated George Orwell excerpts outshine anything assembled by the writer / director whose own political bias and blind spots mirror an Orwell quotation that's cited early in the film: "The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude". IMO, Orwell: 2+2=5 is a political attitude that lacks artistry. Images and video are presented in a "We didn't start the fire" stream; there is no depth, no context and not even a discussion of the title formula, just clips from past portrayals of 1984. Overall, it's clumsily designed to manipulate the hate-filled and uninformed. It will do well in some circles.

Skip this film; better to read Mr. Orwell and a good Orwell biography.

The best I can say about Orwell: 2+2=5 is that the anticipation of seeing it encouraged me to re-read Nineteen Eighty-Four. I did also appreciate the clip from Terry Gilliam's Brazil; isolating the copy room scene made me wonder about the great preparation that was necessary to make the movements so fluid.

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 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.

Watched at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival.

Raoul Peck has always been an underrated filmmaker who has made great documentaries in his career. With his latest focusing on the works of George Orwell, Peck goes raw with the portrait of Orwell's work and purpose. Providing a strong and powerful anti-fascist documentary and demonstrating the warnings, meaning and realism of what Orwell has said, and focused on.

Using great colorful presentations, interesting editing choices and presentation, Peck's direction on how information is presented, described and situated feels striking, important and engaging. With narration of the writings Orwell speaking, many of the themes, topics and concepts explored throughout were intriguing, as it reflects on what Orwell viewed about the world, the negative effects of fascism and the warnings about how reality and society can be changed because of politics and the dark humanities of human worlds. Alongside with using archival footage and interesting creative choices on the sound designs, visuals and presentation, it doesn't shy away from being quite loud, and raw. Allowing the views to see the negative effects about totalitarianism and the brutality of it.

I'm honestly quite surprised this movie got made, especially since our current political times is very messy. Overall, Raoul Peck has made his most angry and raw documentary in his entire career. A striking and powerful documentary that does reflect a lot about the current United States of America and the Trump Administration.