2073, despite initial appearances, is not a narrative film. It certainly enjoys playing up to that appearance, though, with its big, dystopian-style movie poster, its big star (Samantha Morton) and its opening scenes, which tease that it is set in 2073 – 37 years after ‘the event’. Don’t be fooled, however. There’s no key ‘event’ revealed, because that would require the kind of clarity and vision bereft this film. A few, thin minutes of this future-set storytelling aside, we’re thrust into an agitated, unfocused documentary about how current world events – pretty much all of them, it feels like – will one day lead us to such a future. It’s a hectoring, unworthy mess without nuance, clarity or focus.
Anyway, let’s gloss over the narrative frame in much the same way that director and writer Asif Kapadia does – which is strange, all told, as when on his game, he’s amazing. He can tell a story; his short film Laika is one of the best I’ve seen in years. Here, however, we meet Morton’s character, living in a sepia-tinged hellscape (actually what’s left of a shopping mall). She’s mute, but this just means she has opportunity, via a voiceover, to speak to us in platitudes. Trips outside are rare – we are shown people in a vast CCTV hub monitoring people for discussing ‘democracy’. Hmm. A little clunky, that. As for Morton’s character, she ekes out an existence by dumpster-diving, which is actually very encouraging: even in a dystopian hellscape, even in a place where we are told there are strict curfews and street militias, people are still putting things in bins. The people of the mall trade in what they can find in said bins, though what they can possibly find to actually do with things like analogue telephones is a puzzler. We’re also briefly told that one of the mall people is ‘AI’, which seems unrelated to anything whatsoever, as he – like most of the extras – is not written as a character, just someone whose eyes briefly glow red.
So far, so predictable. But I would sooner face an eternity traipsing around in the obligatory dust with Morton and her mates in this lackadaisical dystopia than what follows: now, via the simple line, “How did we get here?” we’re apparently about to be told. Well, we’re about to be told a great deal, but you won’t come away with a satisfying answer to the question. The film morphs into a fast-rolling montage of recent world events, with real journalists’ names flashing up on screen as they each take a turn at explaining why everything is wrong and bad. Some of the conflations here are absolutely dizzying. Whilst people in the UK and Europe may well still be angry over the outcome of the Brexit vote, perishingly few of those people would lump it in with Rodrigo Duterte’s desire to execute three million of his own people, but here in the film, they’re handled in the same breath. Remarkable.
Of course, the lion’s share of footage shown belongs to right-wing protests, and not to make light of these whatsoever, but it’s a tried-and-tested, even dangerously partial picture. The point has been made elsewhere that this kind of blinkered approach can be harmful in its own right, but why attempt to bring reason to this bonkers, simplistic collage? Just at the point that fatigue kicks in, we’re whizzed back into the future and back into the narrative bit, which by now is positioned as the likely outcome of the many, varied issues which will be placed before us before the credits roll.
So we’ve had Brexit; we also get through facial recognition software, the impact of the War on Terror, Mark Zuckerberg and his techbros, algorithms, Hindu atrocities against Muslims, social media, climate change, Palestine, health data ownership…these bad things will lead to people sleeping in malls, maybe, or definitely, it’s not clear. The date on-screen flings to and fro from 2073 to other, past-tense dates, hopping from past to future to past, flashing up an incessant array of dates, places, names, events, voices, maps. There is no debate. There are only monologues from people Kapadia rather likes. Even when sharing many of the concerns being aired, you will still feel demeaned by this scattergun, querulous ordeal. Add to all of this moments which, breaking through the rickety tension, will have you hollering with laughter (the Malcolm X autobiography in the bin; lines like “The news disappeared – just like grandma”) and it’s fair to say that 2073 has rather missed its mark.
There’s a lot to get angry about in this world, and well-pitched documentaries are a phenomenal tool in expressing this righteous anger; this ain’t it. Perhaps 2073 was just too big a project for Kapadia, or certainly the wrong project, given this is someone whose best-received work has tended to be on individual public figures, rather than the end of the world as we know it. Here, with only the haziest ‘it might not be too late’ sentiment to counter all the footage from the past which otherwise suggests that it is, in fact, too late, the end result only provides a dash of confusion to add to the frustration. This is thin gruel, too random to be a polemic, and too piecemeal to really feel like a successful piece of film, let alone a serviceable dystopia. This is a warning, indeed.
2037 will be released on 27th December 2024.