A-Infos (en) France, UCL AL #371 - Culture - See Raoul Peck: Orwell, 2+2=5 (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

"A collection of Bolshevik and Marxist nonsense," is how one online 
review of Raoul Peck's latest film sums it up. Enough to pique one's 
curiosity! Especially since its director has previously excelled in both 
fictionnotably *The Young Karl Marx*and documentary, including *I Am Not 
Your Negro* about James Baldwin, and the miniseries *Exterminate All the 
Brutes* about colonization and genocide.

Here we find a technique dear to Raoul Peck: the portrait. In this case, 
it's a portrait of George Orwell, with the stated intention of 
highlighting his political reflections and offering an 
anti-authoritarian and anti-fascist interpretation of his novel *1984*, 
often referenced by the far right in recent years. The film presents 
Orwell's early years, a pure product of the English colonial 
bourgeoisie, born in India, before attending the prestigious Eton 
College and then serving for five years in the Imperial Police in Burma. 
This introduction is perhaps the best part of the film: it highlights 
the thought process of a man who experienced the imperialist machine 
firsthand by participating in it, his materialist analysis of 
colonialism, and how the primary beneficiaries of an exploitative system 
can also choose to rebel against it.

But after this initial success, the film quickly bogs down, lingering at 
length on the author's final years, during which he wrote his last 
novel, 1984. The director wants to draw parallels between the book and 
the contemporary world. One might have feared that the exercise would be 
clumsy. And it is. Lost in the intoxication of an otherwise virtuoso 
montage, the film ultimately muddles everything, placing all forms of 
authoritarianism, all crowds, and all deaths on the same level. The 
deluge of images quickly becomes frenetic, jumping from one situation to 
another without transition or explanation, and never hesitating to 
resort to shocking visuals. The result is a whirlwind of a 
demonstration, albeit a chaotic one, with many questionable elements, 
such as the heavy-handed insistence on applying the concept of Newspeak 
everywhere, and the use of AI-generated imagery: intended to denounce 
its use, certainly, but was it a valid reason to employ it? Throughout, 
one is left with the feeling of a brilliant director whose message has 
been completely sacrificed to style. If one expected to find an answer 
to the far right's confusing appropriation of Orwell, one is instead 
confronted with an equally confusing vision, but one that claims to be 
on the opposite side.

Upon leaving the theater, one question remains: who is the target 
audience? Its biases are so pronounced that one eventually understands 
how a right-wing viewer, even a moderate one, could see nothing but 
"nonsense." Conversely, for those involved in social struggles, it's 
difficult to leave without feeling like they've witnessed a lengthy 
demonstration of stating the obvious, as enthusiastic as it is futile. 
Especially since the film offers no tools to escape the torpor it 
plunges us into, merely invoking faith in the people who supposedly 
won't renounce their "morality": hard to believe after dozens of minutes 
of images of fascist crowds chained together in a strobe-like fashion. 
What remains is a film whose sweeping, vague denunciation of the modern 
world will surely please the "Télérama left," who can be satisfied with 
feeling they're on the "right side of history," and which may resonate 
with a few confused individuals, not yet lost to conservative rhetoric. 
But otherwise, it's difficult to leave without the unpleasant feeling 
that we've spent two hours being told that 2+2 doesn't equal 5. It's 
doubtful the demonstration needed to be so lengthy.

N. Bartosek (UCL Alsace)

Raoul Peck, Orwell: 2+2=5, released in theaters on February 25, 2026, 
120 minutes.

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Voir-Raoul-Peck-Orwell-2-2-5
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Subscribe/Unsubscribe https://ainfos.ca/mailman/listinfo/a-infos-en
Archive: http://ainfos.ca/en