Premiered at the 2023 Sundance Festival, the film The Pod Generation raises interesting questions.
It is supposed to be one of the characteristics of the human being, right? The possibility of modifying nature. We are not the only ones who do, of course. Beavers build small dams and ants dig intricate tunnels that only they know and can navigate. What motivates us to make these changes, to exercise our control over nature, however, is explicitly the desire to make our lives easier. Not out of instinct, but out of a desire (will) to lessen work in order to have time to do whatever humans want to do. However, capitalism has crossed into every human endeavor. What should be a time to create, communicate and make our lives more pleasant has become a time to produce more, to have more, to “progress” more. Even though The Pod Generationthe new film by Sophie Barthes, does not attack these reflections head on, they are all ideas that exist around this little science fiction story.
The film, which premiered at the 2023 Sundance Festival, follows a couple, played by Emilia Clarke (game of Thrones) and Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 years slave), who (in the not so distant future) choose to have a child using a technology that allows pregnancy completely outside the human body.
The Pod Generation movie review
He is a botany professor at a university who, for budget reasons, requires him to stop using real trees in his classes in favor of holograms and simulations. She is an executive at a public relations company whose bosses offer to pay for this out-of-body gestation service. Not for the goodness inside her hearts, but for her to work harder. And it is that lately the artificial intelligence system that marks her productivity has registered a significant decrease.
what makes The Pod Generation an extremely interesting film is its lack of judgment and its marked empathy for each of its characters. It is clear that for Barthes – who has spoken about his “obsession” with artificial intelligence – technology is neither good nor bad, it is a tool that has positive and negative sides. In his film, Ejiofor’s character doesn’t want to have a child this way, not because he has anything against technology itself. But because he feels that humans are getting further and further away from whatever “natural” means. In this future, nature (literally, plants, forests, and oxygen) have been encapsulated, packaged, and commercialized. One can understand his point of view. But one can also understand the freedom a woman might feel when given the choice not to subject her body to pregnancy. The technology is safe, practical, and the development of the baby is virtually indistinguishable from a “natural” pregnancy. The possibility of choice is desirable. But the motivation behind it is where the questions come in: is all this just to be able to produce more for a company?
The Pod Generation movie review
Inspired by the subtle science fiction of other films such as She Y Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the futuristic world that Barthes creates is also extremely feminine. “A lot of science fiction is very masculine,” the Franco-American filmmaker told Variety. «Everything is very rectangular and has either a lot of white or a lot of black. I wanted to make a science fiction that had pastel colors and round shapes.
The Pod Generation It is a film that could generate many conversations and that, once again, shows us this love-hate relationship that humans have with progress. As always, the answer is in the nuances.
The Pod Generation It does not yet have a release date in Mexico.
J. Ivan Morales Writer, film director and editorial director at his friendly neighbor film publication, Cine PREMIERE. He will never give up hope for a second season of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and Firefly.