By Sara Darling
The comfortable screening room at Soho House was a great location to view Raoul Peck’s documentary about George Orwell’s masterpiece Nineteen Eighty-Four. Narrated by the dulcet tones of Damian Lewis, it didn’t take long for the comforting tone to clash with the film’s content, which is based upon the much malayered narrative, about how the state compels people to believe whatever it says is the truth – that two and two make five.
Featuring snippets of global affairs, the researchers have compiled a lifetime of historical moments into a pastiche of current day relevance to reinforce this notion in everyday politics and life although a documentary, flickers between eras and darts between personal
disgust at colonialism and state-sanctioned cruelty, to his teenage years trying to fit in as a lower, middle class boy.
These were interspersed by his final years on the Scottish island of Jura as he completed his classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, final years on the Scottish island of Jura as he completed his classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. As an aside to his own life, Peck weaves in references to Trump, Orban, Modi, Netanyahu, Putin who are current figures supporting the state, compelling people to believe whatever it says is the truth: that two and two make five. That Orwellian anti-arithmetic of tyranny that has been prevalent since the book was published.
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.
The film is ambitious in scope, incorporating archive footage, literary excerpts and clips from adaptations of Nineteen Eighty-Four and the CIA-backed Animal Farm, bolstered by references to modern media ecosystems and economic inequality. Contemporary commentators and historical voices underscore the relevance of Orwell’s warnings about manipulation and ideological control. It also touches on his forewarning of AI which is something that we cannot escape.
It is not an easy watch, but it’s a relevant one.
Out in cinemas from 27th March.