From PBS News Weekend : William Brangham interviews Raoul Peck about his documentary Orwell: 2+2=5. You can watch the trailer for the film (theaters only) at YouTube.
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Monday, October 13, 2025
Orwell: 2+2=5
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comments: 5
By a strange coincidence, this month my Youtube column to the left of screen keeps offering me clips from the John Hurt movie, a film I didn't see. I can't think of what would have caused the algorithm to pop up these Youtube pieces.
As for the mid-1950's version, a part of it made quite an impression on me as a pre-schooler. I don't know anymore whether I saw the whole show, but I remember telling my mother about a crowd scene where adults dressed alike shout to the view screen, and a lady secretly passes a paper message into the hand of the hero.
Maybe even as a child I sensed something wrong with such crowd behaviour... I think they were shouting, "Big Brother!"
I think the John Hurt movie is really well done. I want to see the Edmond O’Brien one. Edmond O’Brien as Winston Smith seems like an odd choice but a wholly appropriate one (onscreen, he so often seems like a figure of angst).
Say, I bet a lot of Star Trek fans missed the reference: There is an episode where Captain Picard is captured and brutally interrogated for most of the episode, and the bad guy want him to say he sees five lights when there are really four. The last spoken line is after he is rescued, and he admits to someone, "I saw five."
I'm an Orwell fan. I enjoy his calm essays even more than his emotionally painful fiction.
I remember attending (you can guess when) "A Night in Nineteen Eighty-four" at a big upstairs room in the local community college. A panel of (five?) prominent community members and journalists addressed the book. I remember some of them had been to the eastern block and they agreed the televisors would not have been kept in operating condition.
I remember a huge line up for the coffee urn because the size of the crowd was an unprepared-for surprise.
Interesting! My knowledge of Star Trek is less than scant, but I know that there were any number of moments of cultural/political comment.
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