Film reviews: Orwell: 2+2=5 | Two Prosecutors | Broken English | La Grazia | DJ Ahmet

Orwell: 2+2=5 (15) ★★★★

Two Prosecutors (12A) ★★★★

Broken English (15) ★★★

La Grazia (12A) ★★★★

DJ Ahmet (PG) ★★★★

The writing of Nineteen Eighty-Four on Jura is the backdrop for Orwell: 2+2=5, Raoul Peck’s horribly compelling exploration of the evergreen topicality of Orwell’s dystopian vision of life under authoritarian rule. Weakened by tuberculosis, Orwell retreated to the Scottish island in 1946 to write what would become his final and most famous novel, drawing on his perceptive misgivings about the Soviet Union, as well as his interest in the recently ended World War Two and his own participation in the fight against fascism during the Spanish Civil War.

But as Peck illustrates with diary entries and essay extracts (all read by a sardonic Damien Lewis), Orwell’s incisive understanding of despotism grew initially out of his own participation in it as a member of the social-climbing British middle-classes, who decamped to the farther-flung territories of the Empire to play at being part of the gentry. Working for the Imperial Police Force in what was then Burma, Orwell quickly came to the realisation he was part of the problem and this self-knowledge soured him on his own heritage and intensified his outsider status.

Yet Peck (who made the Oscar-nominated James Baldwin doc I Am Not Your Negro) also uses Orwell’s clear-eyed vision of the future to expand the film into a dizzying look at the reality-distorting power of fascism. Matching Orwell’s words to real-world atrocities, it’s eerie to see how applicable they are to everything from the role Facebook has played in facilitating fake news, to George W Bush’s doublespeak-tinged declaration of war against Iraq, to the ongoing outrages of the Trump administration. Orwell anticipated it all. More to the point, he knew what it added up to.

The cultural pervasiveness of Nineteen Eighty-Four can also be seen in Two Prosecutors and Broken English. That’s hardly surprising in the case of Two Prosecutors. Set in the USSR in 1937 at “the height of Stalin’s terror”, it’s about precisely the sort of insidious bureaucratic intransigence that inspired Orwell in the first place. Directed by Ukrainian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa, it follows an idealistic young prosecutor (Alexander Kuznetsov) whose investigation into the torture of a political prisoner by the NKVD (Stalin’s secret police force) starts chipping away at his own naivety while simultaneously making him a target for the very corruption he thinks he can right. Utilising appropriately drab colour schemes and moving at a glacial pace that reflects the world it’s set in, it’s a formalistically rigorous work in which the most chilling moments slip by almost unnoticed.

Broken English, on the other hand, utilises Orwell and Nineteen Eighty-Four in a more conceptually ironic way by framing this music documentary about the late Marianne Faithful within a retro-futuristic sci-fi film, one that casts Tilda Swinton as the “Overseer” of a vast archive known as “The Ministry of Not Forgetting”. As the film opens, she sets her trusty “Record Keeper” (played by George MacKay) the task of gently quizzing the 78-year-old singer about her life as an artist, largely as fanciful way of countering the pervasive, misogynistic and reductive narrative the mainstream media formulated of her as a 1960s “It” girl who once dated Mick Jagger. It’s an intriguing approach, but directors Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard over-egg proceedings with additional characters and podcast-style discussions when all you really want to do is listen to Faithful tell it like it was and revel in the likes of Courtney Love and Nick Cave re-interpreting her songs.

READ MORE: Film reviews: Project Hail Mary | Ready or Not 2: Here I Come | Dead Man’s Wire | Don’t Be Prey

Italian director Paulo Sorrentino re-unites with frequent collaborator Tony Servillo for La Grazia, a typically gorgeous-looking film about political power. Having previously made outré movies about controversial Italian prime ministers Giulio Andreotti (Il Divo) and Silvio Berlusconi (Silvio), Sorrentino’s protagonist here is Mariano De Santis (Servillo), the outgoing fictional president of Italy whose nickname — “Reinforced Concrete” — reveals plenty about the steady, somewhat boring nature of his leadership. What follows, though, is a slyly funny study of a quietly passionate man whose obsession with his late wife inspires a last minute desire to leave a lasting political legacy, one characterised by decency and compassion, not megalomania.

READ MORE: Hippfest Opening Night, Bo’ness review: 'intriguing'

A charming coming-of-age film from Macedonia, DJ Ahmet revolves around a teenager (Arif Jakup) who finds relief from tending to his recently widowed father’s flock of sheep by pursuing a newfound passion for DJing after stumbling across a rave. A subplot involving Ahmet’s mute brother and his own crush on a fellow teen trying to get out of an arranged marriage add additional dramatic beats, while the surreal appearance of a pink sheep and the wry inclusion of a Greek chorus of superstitious villagers (who really just want to binge-watch their favourite TV show) add to the sweet vibe of debut writer/director Georgi M Unkovski’s gently amusing exploration of the eternal clash between tradition and modernity.

Orwell: 2+2=5, Two Prosecutors and DJ Ahmet are in cinemas from Friday; Broken English and La Grazia are out now.

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