The lockdowns are more intense than ever. The virus is a mutation of Covid-19, four years later, and now called Covid-23. In April, writer and director Adam Mason got a call from Simon Boyes with an idea to capture the present moment in film and imagine a future in which the ethos and policies of lockdown drive the whole of life. It was the first Hollywood production following the lockdowns of March 2020. Songbird gives an entirely different look at the same theme, and a much more realistic one, even though this is supposed to be some kind of dystopian fiction. Regardless, that movie helped mainstream the idea of lockdowns and suggest that it won’t be so bad, at least not as bad as allowing a virus to circulate in the normal operations of the market and society. Their track-and-trace antics are wise but, sadly, don’t actually solve anything. In that movie – which everyone seems to have seen and actually acted out once the pathogen finally arrived – the CDC is responsible, benevolent, and one of the few institutions in society that is not driven by panic. The contrast with Contagion (2011) is striking. The truth is perfectly captured in the film, which is nightmarish not because of an imagined future hell but because so many people have lived some version of this movie in the last two years, and millions around the world continue to do so. They mean the end of liberty, the end of human society as we’ve known it, and also the end of public health. It is satisfying to know that at least one film made in the last two years dealt frankly with pandemic lockdowns and their social and economic implications. I’m surprised at some level, given the censorship in our times, that you and I are permitted to see it at all. I can only congratulate the writers and directors, and also praise any venue that allows it to be seen. It is a prescient crystallization of many aspects of the present. It is not some wild vision of the future. Everyone is merely playing a role as civilization collapses. ![]() No one seems to know how to stop it because no one is actually responsible. It features a dystopian society that is fully consumed by disease panic and controlled by a police state that claims to be fixing the problem. It was chilling, remarkable, stunning, revealing, and terrifying in strange ways.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |