Reviewed by Colin Jacobson (April 3, 2025)
Given the state of the world circa 2025, I don’t know how much audience one can find for stories about a bleak, dystopian future. Nonetheless, I figured I’d give 2024’s 2073 a gander.
An unspecified cataclysmic “event” happened in the year 2036, and this disaster continues to reverberate in 2073. This leads to a planet ruled by those who tolerate no dissent and allow no freedom.
Ghost (Samantha Morton) lives in the remains of a San Francisco shopping mall and ventures into the arid and ramshackle surroundings on occasion. She tries to find slivers of the world that once existed, but the totalitarian state makes this perilous for her.
An unusual project, 2073 doesn’t truly offer the narrative-based tale I synopsize. Instead, it mixes glimpses of Ghost and her world with “flashbacks” to the story’s past to depict how the Earth ended up in such a sorry state.
This means 2073 offers a docu-drama. Roughly half of it gives us a fictional story set in the future while the rest uses archival footage, mostly from recent years.
In theory, this sounds like an interesting way to tell a cautionary/apocalyptic tale. In the hands of director Asif Kapadia, though, it becomes something of a mess.
Basically 2073 feels like two poorly-made movies connected together. Kapadia can’t formulate a good sci-fi drama or a quality documentary.
This leaves it as a mushy, awkward melange of elements that never really gel. The “2073” tale feels underwritten and underdeveloped, to say the least.
Mainly we see Ghost wander the ruins of San Francisco and muse about her life. We don’t really get much plot, as even when repressive authorities catch up with her, the narrative fails to offer impact.
Ghost lacks substance as a character. Though the film delves into her background, she nonetheless remains a thin cipher and never turns into an interesting guide through the miserable world of 2073.
It feels like Kapadia started to write a movie all about the future but couldn’t find much interesting to say so he wrapped up a rough sketch and said “good enough!” As foreboding a picture as the movie paints, it just lacks drama when it goes to 2073.
To compensate, Kapadia makes all the documentary footage extremely urgent. We get shots of various real-life atrocities mixed with comments from historians and journalists to discuss the many awful events of the last couple decades or so.
Of which plenty exist, of course. It doesn’t take much effort to find cruelty and corruption in the modern world.
While the film seems to intend to warn us of the threat posed by Trump, it doesn’t focus primarily on him. Indeed, it shows other totalitarian regimes and alludes to Trump more as an indication that Americans need to watch out and take heed.
Which seems completely on target as I write in early April 2025. As Trump rapidly marches the US toward a fascist regime, the issues raised by 2073 seem intensely relevant.
However, the movie depicts all this material in such a haphazard manner that it doesn’t “stick”. The flip-flopping between archival footage and fictional 2073 fare doesn’t help, but even if the film only went with a documentary focus, it still wouldn’t really work.
That’s because Kapadia tends to just throw footage at us without real coherence. He fails to tie together the different components in a meaningful manner and attempt a clear thesis.
The urgency of the presentation damages the end product. 2073 works harder to frighten the viewer than to educate, as it uses ominous music and relentless shots of pain/suffering to make its points.
Again, I don’t disagree with the movie’s concepts. I just think a better-made film would present them in a better-developed fashion and not rely so much on scare tactics.
2073 does get points for ambition, but the end product seems too scattered and incoherent to succeed. More a strident editorial than a movie, 2073 disappoints.
Footnote: a tag scene appears after the end credits.
