Can I Get a Witness? (Canadá, 2024) Ainda sem título em português
Original title: Can I Get a Witness?
Director: Ann Marie Fleming
Writer/Screenplay: Ann Marie Fleming
Main cast: Sandra Oh, Cassandra Sawtell, Reece Presley, Yuki Morita, Jovanna Burke, Andre Anthony, Joel Oulette and Oscar Chark
Runtime: 110 minutes (1°50’)
The year is 2024. A science fiction film begins on the screen. It uses I Don’t Want to Set The World on Fire, a song made famous by the Fallout video game franchise and later became a hit series on Prime Video. And unfortunately, because of a soundtrack choice, a film that had potential finds itself in a strange place between not knowing whether it wanted to benefit from the choice or whether the people who produced it were simply living in a bubble, and in either case, the one who suffers the harm of doubt is the work itself. Given this somewhat disastrous beginning, Can I Get a Witness? has an interesting concept of a future in which, for the sake of ecology, all countries agree to let people live only until they’re 50, so that everyone has a chance to have a good life on earth without a major economic disaster happening. And in this universe, Felicity (Cassandra Sawtell) is starting her job as someone who records people’s passage to death in drawings, since cameras are not environmentally conscious. We follow her first days as she gets used to a new reality, dealing with various griefs and transitions and understanding her own world and past a little better.
As a fan of good science fiction, I believe that the concept of the feature film is as interesting as it’s improbable considering that all countries in the world agreed to this same imposition, and consequently to the end of capitalism in favor of a return to a life based on community and meaningful exchanges. It’s the kind of universe I would love to exist in, but I simply can’t believe it – and the film insists on trying to present realism through constant references to its not-so-distant past, which would be our present. Instead of creating scenes that better explain how this society works, a lot of time is spent adding new layers of information that are not relevant to the narrative and that sound simplistic when placed in the characters’ dialogues.
Even with this conceptual complication, understanding the role of an artist in this proposed post-capitalist ideal world could be great, especially considering that we are in a work of art made in times of creative dispute with artificial intelligence. Understanding art as this powerful tool that helps to document time while facilitating the processing of various emotions could be the way forward, but once again the choice made by the narrative goes against this. We have a girl with an artistic gift, but who uses it in a purely technical way, while her mother, before this process, manages to use something technical, such as patchwork, as a real work of art about her life and her memory. Even the artifice of placing small animations throughout the film seems much more aesthetic than narrative, with them happening inconsistently throughout the work.
These mixed messages make it very difficult to understand the film. Is it suggesting that in a less conflictive time, people would be less capable of creating art? If they seem to present this situation as ideal, but in this universe young people have difficulties such as understanding interest in other cultures, what does this suggest about the solution found?
What makes everything even more misaligned is to consider that, on the film’s website, which is mentioned in its closing credits, there is a section explaining the production’s concern with sustainability, showing that ecology is truly an issue that is advocated. There is talk about the use of renewable materials in the production and even the use of second-hand costumes, but this discourse ends up being, as in the film, underdeveloped. When dealing with a specific genre, it’s necessary to understand its rules well in order to obey or subvert them – and this film follows neither path.
Translated by: Renata Torres
