The Reel Review
A woman living as a scavenger in a dystopian “New” San Francisco in the year 2073 leaves a message of warning in the hope that people of today can avoid her bleak fate. Samantha Morton (In America, Minority Report) stars in this sci-fi/documentary mashup from Oscar winning documentary filmmaker Asif Kapadia (Amy).
Kapadia’s film is an urgent five-alarm warning about the catastrophic effects we face from the global demise of democracy, devastating climate change, the dangerous misuse of artificial intelligence and the polarizing effects of disinformation in social media. The time jumps featuring the bleak 2073 make up the sci-fi half of the film, with Morton’s “Ghost” living in the underground ruins of a shopping mall to avoid detection by drones using facial recognition to detect and arrest those the fascist government deems as dangerous. Flashbacks to decades prior serve as the documentary portion of the film and much of the recent footage is harrowing, as are interviews with Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa and fellow journalists Rana Ayyub and Carole Cadwalladr. Our planet is in peril.
2073 is a depressing film, mostly because we already see this awfulness actually unfolding worldwide in real time. The switch between sci-fi and documentary, while well-intended, is a bit clumsy. The documentary part is fantastic, the sci-fi part a bit more contrived, with distracting snippets from other dystopian films such as Children of Men and Morton’s own Minority Report. 2073 offers no solutions to pull the planet out of this depressing, downward spiral but it is an urgent message we all should heed.
REEL FACTS
• 2073 was inspired by Chris Marker’s 1962 post-apocalyptic short film La Jetée.
• Samantha Morton has been nominated for two Oscars – one for Best Supporting Actress for the 1999 Woody Allen movie Sweet and Lowdown, and for Best Actress for Jim Sheridan’s 2003 film In America.
• Asif Kapadia won the Oscar for Best Documentary for his 2015 film Amy, about entertainer Amy Winehouse. It is the highest grossing British documentary of all time.
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