George Santayana gave us the famous quote: “Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.” George Orwell and Raoul Peck couldn’t agree more, but might offer a slightly different turn of phrase “Those who cannot remember the past are slaves to power.” Orwell: 2+2=5 is Peck’s ambitious attempt to prove Orwell’s thesis and Santayana’s quote, in a way that hopefully will get people interested in searching for absolute truth, before wherever you live succumbs to the machine of power.
Peck’s got a lot on his plate. The loose framing for his doc is going through George Orwell’s later years, when he was writing 1984, his most famous novel. Using journal writings, Peck springboards us into a cavalcade of stuff: we see clips of the various adaptations of 1984, as well as Orwell’s other books like Animal Farm. We then take pieces of those movies and expand out a little further, to contemporary UK/US people in power that are direct warnings Orwell was talking about. Then out further we go in time and space, detailing other times, people, and places also reinforce Orwell’s thesis.
Many historians have made logical comparisons between many authoritarian entities before. Orwell: 2+2=5 takes a more effective approach, remembering a picture is worth 1000 words. I’m pretty sure Alexandra Strauss, the editor had a heart attack when hearing what her task was here. In 2 hours, using Orwell’s writing of 1984, she manages to connect all of world history’s worst power mongers together: Min Aung Hlaing, Adolf Hitler, Vladimir Putin, Augusto Pinochet, Benjamin Netanyahu, Dick Cheney, Francisco Franco, Muammar Gaddafi and Donald Trump among many, many others. Each continent has a representative, showing that this type of power craving isn’t specific to any one race or ethnicity: it’s endemic to humanity itself, simultaneously relieving and horrifying. It’s shocking to see these horrible people saying the same things, hammering home how easy the fascist playbook is easy to adapt, country to country.
Each cruel leader shows at least one, but usually all, of the basic tenets of Orwell’s novel: War is Peace, Ignorance is Strength, Freedom is Slavery. Peck uses Orwell’s journal to arrive at these 3 dictator commandments, one by one. From there, Strauss edits in movies/images that help drive the points home, fascist by fascist. And corporation by corporation, as money and conglomerates form a fascist machine designed to scare everyone into keeping their mouths shut. Because if you speak up? We also see the results of these commandments too, delivering the emotional punch the doc needs. It’s a lot of poor, disenfranchised good people that end up mutilated, both literally and figuratively. Orwell 2+2=5 is a tad all over the place, but nonetheless overwhelming, getting the audience a little closer to that absolute truth that is out there somewhere.
Peck doesn’t have a lot of answers to go with his questions. But if there is one, Jon Stewart said it best: “The best defense against bullshit is vigilance.” Fascists only stay in power if we don’t care or do anything. If you feel the place you’re living in slipping away, rise up, and do it together. In numbers is how we fight, and torch that dumb cult of personality dictators need to maintain power.