‘1984’ gets a new life, and a fresh perspective, in ‘Julia’

George Orwell never went down the memory hole, but a layer of gray dust settled over his work after the Cold War.

His two great dystopias, “Animal Farm” and “1984,” calcified into high school classics. Overuse bent his clever neologisms into clichés.

Apple appropriated the terrifying motif of “Big Brother” for a glitzy TV commercial. And Orwell’s name became a common adjective — Orwellian — an increasingly blunt instrument to hurl at anybody guilty of baldfaced obfuscation or, ultimately, at anybody you disagree with.