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ORWELL ROLLS IN HIS GRAVE Send This Review to a Friend
George Orwell’s “1984” warning about a dictatorial future yields quotes that director, co-writer (with Tom Blackburn) and producer Robert Kane Pappas has used as a takeoff point for his film “Orwell Rolls in His Grave,” an indictment of the current state of the news media, with proof offered that matters are getting worse under ever-narrowing monopolistic corporate control. The year 1984—Orwell’s futuristic year of doublespeak in which truth is turned on its head at the service of the state—has long since gone but the film finds signs everywhere that America is headed in a dire direction.
The film accuses the press of complicity in allowing the Bush Administration to get away with acts that the press should be challenging, and attributes the negligence to control by the right. The power of Rupert Murdoch is cited in particular as one of the tentacle moguls. Vincent Bugliosi, former Los Angeles prosecutor and author of “The Betrayal of America” charges that the five members of the U.S. Supreme Court who stopped the 2000 election recount were guilty of a criminal act in throwing the election to Bush.
Other experts include Charles Lewis, former investigative reporter for ABC News and Director of the Center for Public Integrity, U.S. Congressman Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Aurora Wallace, Professor of Communications at New York University and Mark Crispin Miller, author of “Cruel and Unusual: Bush/Cheney’s New World Order” There are more, including Michael Moore, who provides some much-needed lively moments with his indictments tinged with sassy humor.
The film, narrated by Pappas, is handicapped by being primarily a series of talking heads, although despite that, it is consistently interesting, because most of the notables have important facts and opinions to impart. The web of press control described is ominous. Some of the broadsides are simplistic, but the film does succeed in making its point that diversity is being limited and the obstacles to the press vigorously going after what should be pursued are great and mounting. Orwell’s quotes are interspersed to make comparisons.
“Orwell Rolls in his Grave” provides provocative food for thought and accusations that should make one’s political blood pressure rise. Released by Sag Harbor-Basement Pictures in association with Magic Lamp.
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