Obviously, one appreciates that going to watch a documentary film about George Orwell isn’t going to be a bundle of laughs(!) – particularly when we have a madman like Trump ‘in charge’ of a significant portion of the western world - and so it proved. Listening to Orwell’s prose (read by Damian Lewis) from his published works, letters and diaries is a sobering experience (albeit strangely invigorating). I don’t think I’d been fully aware that he’d written his ‘1984’ masterpiece when he was so close to his death (the book was published in 1949, he died the following year).
It’s a very impressive film.
Obviously, with all footage available of past+present totalitarian/scary regimes, the documentary was spoilt for choice as far as illustrative examples were concerned. Orwell actually predicted the rise of AI and, of course, we now have the internet when it comes ‘information’ availability (and, with it, ‘fake news’ and propaganda). The documentary also includes present-day videos involving the likes of Trump, Orban, Modi, Netanyahu and Putin. No doubt, Orwell would have just nodded and said “I told you so”!
Overall, while I thought the documentary film was excellent, there are lots of gaps when it comes to some of the somewhat controversial aspects of Orwell’s life (eg. his anti-Semitic views in his younger days) and so there were times when I almost felt I was being ‘manipulated’ and that perhaps I wasn’t being given a more balanced view of things (but, hey, don’t get me wrong – I’m on Orwell’s side!).
It was a very powerful film and yet, somewhat predictably, also a pretty depressing one. It left me feeling very sad about how things might pan out in the coming years – not my future, of course, but my children’s children’s futures.
Oh for a simple, beautiful world of decency, integrity, honesty, respect and love.
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