https://rollingstone.com.br/cinema/como-um-documentario-obre-george-orwell-omornado-o-filme-more-assustador-de-2025/

When he was 19, still the Eons of Essays, novels and the pseudonym that would guarantee her literary immortality, Eric Arthur Blair He went to the east and joined the Indian imperial police in Burma. The country was still under British colonial rule – “an advanced post of the empire” – and the young man was highlighted to several cities in Ranguum and surroundings.

It was there that Blay He began to notice how the authorities within this occupied territory operated with the express objective of maintaining cultural supremacy and the native population under the control of their majesty. Not only began to despise the violence that he and his fellow police officers perpetrated, but also to recognize that “To hate imperialism, you need to be part of it. But it is not possible to be part of such a system without recognizing it as an unjustifiable tyranny.” Unlike England, there was no upper class and lower class. There were only the oppressors and the oppressed.

With the veil sharply taken from his eyes, Blay eventually left the service. He would publish a book based on his experiences as part of the “real machinery of despotism”, entitled Days in Burma. Between this work of fiction and the Gonzo Journalism of Worst in Paris and Londonin which he detailed a first person experiment in extreme poverty, the former policeman was beginning to name himself as a writer. Or rather, a pseudonym for you, since Blay adopted a new name by becoming a man of letters: George Orwell.

Orwell: 2+2 = 5from Raoul Peckdevotes a brief but crucial screen time to this chapter of the author’s life, filling the scenes with faded photos and the prose of Orwell being read on the soundtrack by Damian Lewis. (The remarkable filmmaker disagrees that these audio ranges are called narrations, simply suggesting someone providing useful narration for events; Peck prefers to describe them as “performances”, and, as well as the similar work of Samuel L. Jackson in I’m not your black2016, the interpretation of hoarse voice of Lewis of the writings of Orwell It is less a recitation and one more incarnation.) It is presented as a crucial moment in the life of its subject and receives the treatment of “Basic Documentary”, one of several milestones the film uses to demarcate territory. It was here that Orwell He radicalized by empathy, approaching a step of becoming a sharp chronicler of misery, humanity, and his era.

There is a “standard” version of this portrait of an artist where, with this item from the key of key events marked, the film would simply advance on the timeline. But then Peck It begins to intertwine scenes of modern Myanmar conflict, which portray beaten and detained dissidents, advertising feeding indignation and chaos, the double speech of government being used to justify “pacification” – one of the various terms the film identifies as euphemisms for much more sinister and state -sanitary enterprises. The past is frighteningly with the present. The story is not repeated, but often rhyme. We have always been at war with lightning.

Therefore, other points of conflict, war zones and dark historical moments begin to intertwine in the movie: Ukraine, Gaza, January 6. Contemporary leaders and totalitarian regimes still in progress are shocked by the caricatures of Ralph Steadman for an edition of The Animal Revolutionthe second most famous book of Orwelland clips of three different adaptations of 1984his most famous work. Using the slogans of the Ministry of Truth of that novel – War is peace, Freedom is slavery, Ignorance is strength – As chapter headers, Peck It begins to display montages of journalists being arrested, billionaires parading and exerting power, examples of the ways in which the media became weakened and monopolized, the reality was kidnapped and distorted. “The very concept of objective truth is disappearing from this world”wrote the author, and the fact that he registered this thought in 1946 in his essay Why do I write It is both sober and nauseating. We don’t have to ask ourselves what Orwell I would think of our world today. He has written in detail about it.

It becomes immediately apparent that Orwell: 2+2 = 5 – The subtitle itself attesting to the distortion of the facts and the breaking of wills – is not just about a literary figure of the twentieth century. It is also about the 21st century authoritarianism, presented in the same way and “connecting the points” with which Peck built its monumental documentary of 2021 on colonialism, EXTERMINE ALL GROUND. If it looks like a difficult movie to watch, the equivalent of “DoomSCrolling”: The Moviein fact it is. But it is also a will that Orwell He was not just writing about his time or addressing temporary injustices. The author understood how power works, and how far people, classes, political parties, and dictators would keep it.

Peck It has long created fictions, documentaries and documents impeccable and politically loaded. With this latest masterpiece, the Haitian filmmaker gave us not only an invaluable and conclusive look at our present moment, but by far the scariest film of 2025. He ends up observing the need for collective actions, mentioning BLM protests and participation in the funeral of Alexei Navalny as a sign of challenge in the face of tyranny. However, the movie is smart enough not to suggest easy optimism or offer false hope. Still, when he repeats that photo of Orwell And his Indian nanny, he gives him a clear sense of how the baby in that woman’s arms would spend his life fighting tides of indifference and emphasizing empathy as a necessity, not a luxury. The writer was inspired to combat his complicity in a corrupt system. The movie inspires you to do the same.

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• George Orwell