British essayist and author George Orwell’s writings have been woefully misunderstood and misrepresented in the recent political discourse. Taking its title from a passage in the writer’s last and most referenced and influential novel, ‘1984’, Raoul Peck, director of the excellent James Baldwin documentary ‘I am Not Your Negro’ attempts to wrestle back and apply Orwell’s writing to our present situation, and more recent history of totalitarianism via footage of Marcos, Pinochet, Putin and Orbán. The picture also chronicles the writer’s last few years on the remote Scottish island of Jura where Orwell, struggling with tuberculosis, was bringing up his son by himself following the death of his wife, while completing ‘1984’. Damien Lewis narrates from Orwell’s diaries, correspondence and essays. Woven throughout the film are various clips from Orwell adaptations, including the three versions of ‘1984’ and the ‘Animal Farm’ animation, edited in a blizzard-like disorientating manner reminiscent of Adam Curtis’s documentary essays. Keen Orwell readers will already be familiar with his insightful writings, on class and empire, but this will be a good entry point for newcomers and the casually curious. The film is at its most interesting when it is at its most bold, particularly when Peck, deploying clever visuals, updates 1984’s Ministry of Truth’s Newspeak with muddying phrases such as ‘peacekeeping operations’ and ‘collateral damage’.

David Willoughby

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