“Can you really put a value on human life?”
Hurray Sci Fi London 2021 is here! A week long of curated short and feature length films, hosted by Sci-Fi-London.com at Stratford Picturehouse in London! I was honoured to have been invited by Louis, Marta and the team to opening night and I’m looking forward to checking out what else the week unfolds! Come watchalong with me. I’ll be seeing the following so come say hi:
Really wish I could see more but unfortunately I can’t this time. I’m gonna try and catch some of the shorts. Louis – the founder of the festival – recommended ‘The Scent of a Forest’ (directed by Servaes Dewispelaere) which the team voted as their fave short of this year’s lot so if nothing else, be sure to check that out and let me know what you think!
So, back to WARNING!
Warning, directed by Agata Alexander, starts out from the onset with a mechanic astronaut who is set on a personal path of disaster when the tech he has been sent to fix explodes, hurtling him into nothingness. He is given days to live.
Meanwhile on earth we touch on the stories, humanity and inhumanity of current life on earth. We see a woman who is released from the routine of her Alexa-esque connection to God 2.0 when one day it malfunctions and she is forced to continue her spiritual journey alone. There’s a teenage girl who hopes to make a bunch of money for a better life by allowing a random stranger to invade her consciousness for just a weekend which ends up taking a very dark turn. There’s a seemingly young couple meeting the fam for the first time, and we soon discover that the man in the couple is immortal while she is not. The mother does not approve. There’s the story of an elderly robot who cannot be sold, and we see a sliver of humanity in it as it dances with another robot/android, shrouded behind a curtain. There’s the guy who just can’t let the past stay in the past, much to the horror of his ex girlfriend. And a small child, looking to the sky, wishing her father home.
I thought it was a wonderful start to the festival. I wondered about the title of the film.. warning. Could the astronaut have warned people of what was to come? It felt like he could not have, which makes it all the more tragic. That he had to sit and watch it unfold. I imagined his death as he ran out of oxygen all alone in the vastness of space wondering if he could have done something. Was it our choices that should have served as a warning? That we were on a path of destruction? No. It appeared inevitable. That regardless of the choices the characters would have made, they were bound by the exact same fate. It amused me at least that the immortal elite were seemingly also bound by this and I thought to myself, they cannot buy themselves out of this quandary.
I noticed these images throughout of this sort of sterile, sanctioned life… Beautiful flowers covered with bugs living in little sealed greenhouses or cages in peoples home, almost like little reminders of life among perfect homes with perfect wallpaper of plants.
Each mini story could honestly have been a movie in itself and I think it was in the section on mortality where something was said that resonated for me in this film. That immortality makes life less precious and I think in some way that is true of this film. Sure. Each section could have been entire films, but it was the miniature nature of these different stories that ended up making this film so precious. All these small hints of life woven into an untidy, tragic story about the end of days. Of love and loss. Of a desire to connect in a modern time.
I think the main takeaway I had and perhaps this was the purpose of the film, is that it is itself a warning. How would you act? How would you wish to spend your last days on earth if you had a warning? With greed? Living in the past? With hope? With a loved one? Alone? Helpless? Would you have made different choices? What would make your life more meaningful?
So all in all, I thought this film was poetic. It managed to somehow pull off chaotic and tidy all at once. There were some pretty famous actors in the mix which was quite surprising to see. Overall enjoyed it and loved that the concept had me thinking for hours after I left the cinema. Would recommend checking it out!
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