Two Hours of Despair (Arena)

As far as I can recall, the audience laughed just three times at the Perth preview of Raoul Peck’s new documentary, Orwell: 2+2=5: once when the cinema manager, introducing the film, almost said ‘Enjoy!’, before correcting course and wishing us ‘a meaningful experience’; once on hearing Orwell confess his desire to give Sartre ‘a kick up the arse’ in his review of Antisemite and Jew; and once at some footage of a Trump supporter batting away a reporter’s questions on the basis that any criticism of her President was fake news. (‘I don’t believe it’ was her stock response to statements about the Donald’s conduct that not even the man himself would contest.) All three laughs came as a welcome relief to what was otherwise an exhausting and dispiriting experience. Only the last one, however, has any particular bearing on its status as a documentary, and the political arithmetic at its core. [More here]