“2073” Review

It is not uncommon these days to hear someone muttering about how our current world now appears as dysmal as the dystopian depictions of sci-fi movies. The invasion of privacy and the rise of fascism have crafted a world that even the wildest of speculative fiction couldn’t match. 2073 is a film that attempts to do that anyway. It merges the documentary-style smatterings of real-world issues and layers it with grim depictions of a decayed future. Neither angle is all that engrossing as the film glosses over so much, where the sci-fi effects and emotional music crowd out any more profound exploration of our ravaged Earth.

The narrative follows a character called Ghost, ambling around the ruins of a civilization caved under capitalism. She doesn’t speak much to those she meets in her travels, but she does have plenty to say in her inner monolog, where she ponders the old world of libraries, books, and food that wasn’t synthetic. If you’ve read or watched any dystopian story, you’ve probably heard these familiar passages, likely with better contemplation and insight. George Orwell’s 1984 this is not. She does interact with other characters, including an android who makes her secretly despise artificial intelligence and a former history teacher who was fired for teaching the wrong things. Ghost will explain all this in voiceover, reading like a first-draft dystopian short story I would’ve written in junior high.

Credit could at least be given for the documentary angle bringing to light the atrocities that have plagued us for the past 24 years. But, again, if you haven’t been under a rock for that amount of time, you’ve heard better reports. The film seems more interested in covering the complete picture rather than explore any corner of what is currently speeding us towards future dystopia. There will be interviews and footage of how The Philippines enabled a dictator who targeted journalists. But, wait, those aren’t the only journalists being silenced, as the film cuts away to a British journalist being sued. And who of the greedy who can sue? How much has Donald Trump gotten away with? How much has Elon Musk done to destroy social media? And what about social media? It now controls our lives and has our information! Did you know about all this?

There’s never a moment of correlation between the fact and the fiction, making this experience feel like two different films fighting each other. I like to imagine that this was a compromise between two creative minds who couldn’t decide on what film they wanted to make. It’s not uncommon for documentaries to wander off into different areas, but the film keeps splitting so many times as though it got entirely lost on the way to its thesis statement. The sloppy staging of jumping from current event to on-the-nose sci-fi creates this empty sensation where the film’s departing message of hope feels false. Sure, we do have a chance to save this world. It would’ve been nice if the film looked into that aspect instead of its dismal and tedious doom-spiral narrative.

2073 is an ill-thought film, the cinematic equivalent of doom-scrolling a social media app’s news feed. It’s designed so those without hope will wallow in despair, and those already aware of these issues will grow aggravated by the scattershot review. This film has nothing more to say about these real issues beyond an amateurish attempt to connect it to dystopian science fiction, as though that is a novel idea in the age where 1984 has been a consistent punchline for most headlines. The only use for such a film could be to inform someone asleep for 30 years. Even then, the only good it would do with its exhaustion assessment and clumsy framing would be to convince that same person to return to their slumber.