Out of Break
Seth Larney’s indie sci-fi feature debut depicts a world in which oxygen is a limited commodity and the world is ravaged by the effects of anthropogenic climate change. But while its ultimately hopeful ecological message is laudable, Bronwyn Lovell finds that the film’s depiction of women – and gender roles in the world of the future – remains captive to the limited perspective of the science fiction genre’s male-dominated past.
Seth Larney’s 2020 science fiction thriller 2067 begins amid what might be the climax of another film: in the last city on Earth, a nuclear explosion is imminent, and mere seconds remain to prevent catastrophe. And yet, the characters are not alarmed. In this apocalyptic near-future vision of a time when Earth’s plant life is extinct and synthetic oxygen has become currency (ATMs have been replaced with ‘O2TMs’, at which people fill up their wearable tanks), teetering on the precipice of death has become routine. After a year in which international and intranational border closures, lockdowns, and face masks became the new normal, it will perhaps be a little easier for viewers to grasp how humanity could so quickly acclimatise to the previously unimaginable.
Premiering locally at the 2020 Adelaide Film Festival, 2067 is an ambitious Australian film made for an international audience; its makers are apparently keen to contribute to the urgent global conversation about anthropogenic climate change and the hope that we can change the planet’s however, presumably due to the pandemic, this has, at the time of writing, not yet eventuated. The film’s cinematic release in the US in October was, by contrast, almost nonexistent, but achieved a wider viewership by simultaneously launching on iTunes and Amazon Prime Video (it later became available to local audiences via Netflix Australia in February this year). While it is difficult to acquire precise audience data for films on streaming services, 2067 was the highest-ranking independent film (and second-most-popular title overall) on the iTunes digital chart in February 2021, and currently has over 5000 votes on the Internet Movie Database (at present, more than any of the major Australian features released over the summer).
