
Asif Kapadia’s “Amy” won an Oscar, but more than Amy’s pop culture status, the film has touched audiences with its powerful message. Set against the backdrops of biographical arcs surrounding Ayrton Senna and Diego Maradona, the British filmmaker has managed to implement a stylistic approach that renders the finale of each film tragic. Dan Allain’s latest horror fantasy “2073” appears to be more of a natural continuation of this vision in that it incorporates old videos but uses them to bolster the narrative of a dystopian future and combine them with contemporary trends.
The methods that succeed eloquently in demonstrating the rise and ultimate downfall of an individual biography were not as powerful and persuasive for projecting the near future. The movie suggests a permanent state of despair brought on by the destruction of AI, climate change, authoritarian regimes, and other ailments of society collapsing in on itself. It’s hard to say who or how will be compelling enough to try to prevent the end of the world now that it has been so thoroughly predicted.
We can only be surprised by the fact that it is anticipated to be some 50-odd years before the 12-headed monster of global disintegration will bring the human race to an extent where they will be scavengers in the underground of shopping complexes ruins while cities are patrolled from above by drones looking for non-existent threats on toxic air filled streets of ruins which was a city.
Seventy-three years after “the Event” it is possible to find Ghost (Samantha Morton, who ultimately is wasted in this dystopia), an unoriginal ghost in many ways, in the basement of a shopping mall or what once used to be called a mall, she is a scavenger now. Only contemplating the fate of the almost breathless Ghost’s ex-college professor (Naomie Ackie) with whom she’d had a brief conversation, followed by reading out from “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”: “All that’s left is me clutching every wall”. Anyways someone must be thinking that Americans are doing something how do I know, oh there is a disappointing narration from the rest of the world, “the places there are not worth remembering it’s all shit, my life can not change anyways but many more like me can”. Ghost is tough but that out of desperation, however, raises a lot of unnecessary questions. This being one, how does she know who will reach out from the past? How did the time machine work in “La Jetee”? I’m sorry that’s very juvenile.
Ghost’s account, which it must be noted was built on fragmented memories from her grandmother and is interwoven with grainy snippets collected from news reports and popular memes, further adds to the skewed perspective, which is painfully elaborated through a poignantly appealing score of Antonio Pinto and his orchestration of the events.
Images abound of Trump’s overstated eternal presidency as the screamer boasting 30 years in power pans across the skyline-shaming LED: “Chairwoman Trump Celebrates her 30th Year in Power” having a toss at Ivanka who is expected to be 92 by 2073 and as such, nobody is overly worried about the leader’s age. But primarily this is how Kapadia and co-writer Tony Grisoni manage to take in a lot of material that leaves unease all by itself: for instance, drifting houses, flames, police baton charges, mob riots, concentration camps for Uyghurs and Mark Zuckerberg trying his best to stay within the parameters of ‘normal’ human behavior. Regular images of today’s autocrats Mackair would be too generous shift the already weakened context of any hope for the aspiration of his hate-filled brutality: Modi, Xi, Maduro, Duterte, Bolsonaro, Orban, Putin the list is endless. Also, pop Musk, Thiel, Murdoch, Bezos, Priti Patel, Nigel Farage, and Steve Bannon. But are such apocalypse beacons such as these to be brightly burning in the future rather than are linked or integrated which one can barely guess is at the heart of a narrative that is like an irritating game of whack-a-mole with flexes on catastrophes?
Nor ought they, rather, have to simply believe in her vision for 2040, which Kapadia seems to insist on peddling. Shouldering this burden are the former journalists Rana Ayyub, Carole Cadwalladr, and James O’Brien, who are splattered across several news agencies like, from the perspective of times and years, numerous diviners, for 2024. Especially Kapadia overemphasizes with unreasonable confidence the convincing power of connect-the-dots of the skilled Filipino journalist, which is understandable, why film critics are not simply crying out ‘to the view of Ramona S. which Tanya S.’. Not see the point of it as well: her films are about nothing more than Ressa herself – a person constantly in her video, also uses words and points to concepts that were already touched on in the previous movie but were presented in a more chaotic way, “2073”.
The goal of agitation propaganda is not always to evoke some reasoned rational or good side of the audience but there is no better word to describe Kapadia’s tendency. More idealist intentions are prone to get lost in verbose expression with heinous strategic miscalculation by using a picture on which a dead child is depicted lying on wet sand, turned face down on the Greek coast, which is cringy to most of the viewers as it is on one ephedrine spikes of Pinto’s score. Or direct references to the sci-fi classic film, which turned out to be The Voight-Kampff Test Cameos from Blade Runner, as an additional eye sore, for the viewers, many felt the world possesses enough imagination and it doesn’t require something so futuristic to highlight its already dreary fate which is already predictable from barely second into the movie.
By wading through news and stories to justify with facts and make the audience ask ‘what next’ there is an attempt to encompass all audience needs. “The film, in this case, fails to achieve both.”
Rather, it is the howls of relenting conditions through whataboutism, which in many instances, tends to frighten one instead of mobilizing focalized action towards a single issue. “2073” has left me reluctant to believe Ghost was pessimistic, but in fact, it is already too late for us as well.
For more movies like 2073 visit 123movies