"Peck's engaging strategy is to lay voiceovers by actor Damian Lewis of Orwell's written words on top of a collage of both fictional and documentary film footage, demonstrating that his ideas have as much, if not exponentially more, relevance to 2025 than they did when first published. The adjective "Orwellian" usually refers to the surveillance-state panopticon of his final novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, but Peck uses passages from Orwell's wider oeuvre as well."
"For at least a decade, and with increasing frequency, experts have noted how developments in this country rhyme with, even if they don't exactly repeat, those in other nations that have retreated from liberal democracy into authoritarian, if not outright fascist, regimes. And, as Raoul Peck's new film reminds us, few thinkers delivered more prescient and explicit warnings about the precariousness of the norms and institutions on which the post-World War II order was built than the Indian-born British author George Orwell."
The United States' current political turmoil shows predictable echoes of authoritarian shifts seen elsewhere. Raoul Peck's film overlays Damian Lewis's voiceovers of George Orwell on a collage of fictional and documentary footage to link historical warnings to present-day threats. The film treats "Orwellian" as broader than surveillance alone, drawing on Nineteen Eighty-Four, Animal Farm, Road to Wigan Pier and Homage to Catalonia to trace Orwell's political concerns. Visual juxtapositions alternate archival adaptations and contemporary imagery to illustrate democratic backsliding. The inclusion of multiple cinematic adaptations highlights how cultural representations of authoritarianism continue to inform modern perceptions.
Read at Oregon ArtsWatch * Arts & Culture News
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