jorgeeduardo1961

This is one more entry in the android genre so brilliantly pioneered by "Blade Runner" and its lesser sibling, "Terminator". Far from the best but neither the worst, the film is pleasant in a pot-boiler fashion. While most of the narrative simply replicates what are by now time-worn cliches in this genre, it does offer two original touches. First, North Korea has become a haven for human survival. The logic here is impeccable: implicitly, an underdeveloped and backward economy would have no expensive androids doing the labour previously assigned to humans. In the robot apocalypse, material poverty and backward technology would suddenly become a comparative advantage. Only Korea is mentioned, but the uniforms and attitudes of the Korean characters clearly reference the communist régime in the north. Second, in the midst of the most dramatic human-android confrontation, one character references the great Czech writer, Karel Capek and his brilliant play, "R. U. R." Robots, once created, are bound to rebel: this is the lesson drawn from Capek's satire on human exploitation, ironically quoted in the midst, not of a workers' rebellion, but of a robot revolt.

The most irritating elements in this work are common to most XXIst Century post-apocalyptic films and series. Why are all the characters so well-dressed and so well-fed? In a world at war and suddenly deprived of most modern technology -and specifically AI- all the niceties of civilized urban society would disappear! Even more glaring: with explosions and fires raging all around, as humans and androids wage war, how is it that the female lead ALWAYS has such perfect makeup? And while it is understandable that rogue androids with superhuman strength would be -in context- more frightening than animals, the observation that noise heard IN THE FOREST was "just a wild animal" seems banal and muddle-headed to an extreme.... Experienced hikers would never say "just a grizzly bear".... Such low-points notwithstanding, the film delivers what it promised: two hours of escapist entertainment with decent acting and some drama.

Fleur Fortune's film The Assessment offers its audience a marvellous -wickedly funny at times, calculatedly cruel at others- meditation on the possibilities of happiness in a loveless world. Set firmly within the "Dark Mirror" tradition of intelligent social commentary through the genre of science fiction, her feature length work elaborates a stylish and perfectly paced parable on the role of love in keeping us human. The three protagonists inhabit a future society where, after some ecological disaster, a limited number of humans have been able to take refuge in a utopían state: for the lucky few, life in beautiful homes regulated by AI, set in the midst of a wild beachfront landscape, is possible, as is work from home on scientific projects whose intellectual rigor is reward in itself. Not all are so lucky in terms of material comfort, but all benefit from vastly extended lifespans free from disease. Paradise: whose sinister foil is "the borderlands" where dissidents are sent.

The fly in the ointment is, however, that near immortality can be had only at the price of severely restricted parenthood. Hence the "assesment" of the film's title: Mía and Aaron must be exhaustively vetted before they will be allowed to have a child. And the Assessor (Virginia) has absolute authority -like immigration officials in many countries now- her word is final. The densely-layered meanings of the narrative unfold through the subsequent exercise in arbitrary power over successive days.

What is portrayed is not only a society without children but one without parents -biological mothers who refuse to be called "Mother" or who have abandoned their progeny. A world without pets: they have been "culled". Couples who betray one another in the most hurtful ways and think nothing of it.

A glimpse, I fear, into a future not so distant.

This is a stylish, thought-provoking film for those who find pleasure in complex, aesthetically well-wrought, perfectly acted cinematic works.