2073 review – Asif Kapadia rages against the death of democracy and our planet

Venice film festival
The documentary-maker loses some nuance but he is tackling big issues, as Samantha Morton picks through post-apocalyptic ruins in a sombre futurist reverie

Asif Kapadia takes on big subjects in a vehement drama-doc fantasy of just 85 minutes: climate change, corporate fascism, the global erosion of democracy. And if the result feels occasionally strident, or redundant, or choir-preaching, then maybe that is just a function of the vast and implacable importance of what he’s talking about.

This is the elephant in the room, the insidious gradual diminution of our freedoms, and addressing it head-on like this (which is probably the only way to address it) is arguably to sacrifice subtlety and nuance and the more calibrated filmic language that has made Kapadia’s films, about pop-culture icons such as Diego Maradona and Amy Winehouse, more approachable. And yes, those films worked better on their own terms, but that’s not to deny the force or the relevance of what he’s attempted here.

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