Orwell 2+2=5: If only it weren't true

Orwell 2+2=5 (2025) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five); rated R, for violent content and brief graphic nudity

Available via: Amazon Prime and other VOD options

By Derrick Bang

“The very concept of objective truth is fading out of this world. Lies will pass into history.”

 

George Orwell, born Eric Arthur Blair, wrote those words in a 1946 essay titled Politics and the English Language.

 

This film concludes as shoppers in a typical American mall are blind to the three key
tenants of George Orwell's 1984 that surround them: War Is Peace, Ignorance Is
Strength, and Freedom Is Slavery.

Perceptive and prophetic as he was, Orwell never could have imagined the degree to which those words would become even more accurate, in this third decade of the 21st century.

Director Raoul Peck’s biographical quasi-documentary also is equal parts disturbing teller of truth … although, as Orwell himself would have cautioned, whose truth?

 

This film should be required viewing by every adult in these United States. Many will embrace it willingly, attuned to the terrifying, clear-cut path that both Orwell and Peck have blazed, illustrating the current world-wide slide from democracy into fascism.

 

As for those who would prefer to ignore or dismiss its message, perhaps they should be strapped to chairs with their eyes held open — as with Malcolm McDowell, in 1971’s A Clockwork Orange — and forced to watch … if only to see themselves, and their hatreds, laid bare.

 

Peck’s film is by no means perfect; his pacing is too leisurely at times, and his enraged, wide-ranging reach sometimes exceeds his grasp. The result can feel overwhelming.

 

Virtually all of the narrative text in Peck’s film comes from Orwell’s written words — from his books, essays, personal letters and diary entries — as somberly read by Damian Lewis. The timeline of Orwell’s life — from early childhood to his death in January 1950, only half a year after 1984 was published — is intercut with clips of events from the early 20th century to mere months before this film was completed.

 

Some of this real-world footage is horrifying; one photographic still, in particular, is gut-wrenching. Other bits are scary for an entirely different reason: the blandness with which despots spread lies and distort reality.

 

Peck also inserts telling scenes from numerous big-screen versions of 1984 — mostly the 1956 Edmond O’Brien and 1984 John Hurt adaptations — along with similarly telling sequences from 2018’s Fahrenheit 451, 2002’s Minority Report and 1985’s Brazil.

 

It quickly becomes clear that we now live in an era of Orwellian “Newspeak,” which he defined as “political language designed to make lies sound truthful, and murder respectable.”

 

Dream Horse: A crowd-pleasing winner

Dream Horse (2020) • View trailer

Four stars. Rated PG, for no particular reason

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.28.21 

Nothing beats the triumphant emotional rush of a well-crafted underdog story.

 

Except, perhaps, an under-horse story.

 

Particularly one based quite closely on actual events.

 

You just can't beat the excitement of birth, as Jan (Toni Collette) and Brian (Owen Teale)
discover, when their new foal enters the world.

Welsh director Euros Lyn’s Dream Horse is the feel-good film of spring: a timely reminder of the amazing things that can be accomplished when people unite for a common cause. Scripter Neil McKay, gifted with an already incredible true story, has populated these events with the sort of quirky, colorful, small-town residents and eccentrics who pop up in whimsical dramedies such as Gregory’s Girl, The Closer You Get and The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain.

That many of Lyn’s actors are portraying real people, is the icing on the cake.

 

The time is just before the turn of the 21st century, the setting the depressed hamlet of Cefn Fforest in South Wales, fallen on hard times since the closure of its nearby mines. The indefatigable Jan Vokes (Toni Collette) rises at dawn every morning, in order to wash the floors and then work register at a local mega-market; in the evenings, she tends bar at a workingmen’s club.

 

In between, somehow, she looks after her elderly parents and her arthritic husband, Brian (Owen Teale). In her free time (!), as a lifelong animal lover, she raises rabbits, whippets, ducks and even prize-winning pigeons.

 

One evening, she chances to hear a conversation led by club patron Howard Davies (Damian Lewis), while he waxes eloquent about the trials and tribulations — and expense — of raising race horses. Captivated by the notion, despite its complete impracticality, Jan immerses herself in horse lore and pumps Howard for additional information.

 

Fully aware that she’d never be able to buy a racing thoroughbred, Jan opts for the alternative of creating one, by purchasing an undistinguished mare for £300 and installing it in a makeshift stable in her garden. But breeding and then training a racehorse will require much, much more money.

 

Her solution: to enlist the financial support of local townsfolk, via a co-ownership syndicate. On the appointed evening — having mounted and distributed flyers throughout the community — Jan, Brian and Howard nervously wait for somebody to arrive.

 

They ultimately wind up with a motley collection of 23 villagers, each of whom agrees to contribute £10 per week, in service of this wild scheme. Several of these individuals are unemployed and on the dole; others barely make ends meet in their own small businesses. But all are inspired by Jan’s passion, and by the tantalizing notion — however unlikely — of raising and then racing a champion horse.