Director – Ann Marie Fleming – 2024 – Canada – Cert. 12a – 100m
The subject matter *****
The film itself *
Can I fast-forward through the boring bits? Dystopian SF outing with good intentions may be the least watchable film of the year – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 19th
Here’s a movie about one of the most important subjects there is which manages to turn itself into mind-numbingly tedious narrative. It’s hard to imagine more of a missed opportunity.
It’s the first day on the job for gifted sketch artist Kiah (Keira Jang), and before her experienced co-worker comes to pick her up, she’s already having misgivings. She doesn’t want to wear the old-fashioned dress her mother Ellie (Sandra Oh) has picked out for her (her mum bigs the item up as ‘vintage’). Her mum, meanwhile, takes delivery of a mysterious (and apparently equally vintage) fridge, plus a bottle of champagne (which she puts straight in the fridge), along with a mysterious wooden box for which she signs the obligatory paperwork without hesitation (she used to work getting people to sign these herself, so she knows the contents backwards).
Kiah is still getting herself ready when her co-worker turns up co-worker Daniel (Joel Oulette) turns up, so while he’s waiting, Ellie treats him to a piece of her special pie, which he finds delicious. Eventually Daniel and Kiah set off from the modest, isolated, house in the country on their bicycles. When they encounter other travellers, pedal cycles appear to be the obligatory mode of transport. There are no cars, no vehicles powered by the internal combustion engine.
They start meeting the customers on their day’s schedule. Daniel talks them through the EOL (End of Life) process, which involves the person (or couple or family) opening a box containing deadly gas, from the effects of which Daniel and Kiah are protected by wearing masks. Then it’s up to Kiah to sketch the wilfully deceased. They use this representational process rather than photography because of the chemical processes involved in the latter.
After they’ve completed their day’s work, as a newbie, Kiah is taken to the archive equipped with a 16mm film projector – an artefact she’s never seen before – to watch Marx Brothers comedy Duck Soup (Leo McCarey, 1933 – we only see a few images and hear none of the hilarious dialogue, presumably because the current film’s meagre budget wouldn’t cover the cost of the rights). She could have watched Zoolander (Ben Stiller, 2001) instead, which she would have preferred, but that would require booking ahead.
There are some curious uses of special effects drawn animation in certain sections of the live action – when Kiah draws on her sketchpad, little bits of drawing float in the air. When she plays an old 78 rpm phonograph, little drawing float out of the horn. There have been some great live action / animation composite films over the years – Mary Poppins, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Volere Volare, Ninjababy – but quite what this element adds to the current film is beyond me. Perhaps it ticks a producer’s box for a grant.
Sandra Oh is the big (i.e. minor Canadian) star here, and the film tends to be more watchable when she’s on the screen than when she’s not. But even her talents can’t save certain scenes which get bogged down in what Hitchcock used to deride as “photographs of people talking”. There’s a lot more of this in the hour is so for which Sandra Oh is absent, in which the film relies on mostly unwatchable interplay between two secondary leads Jang and Oulette. In a cinema you’re trapped, yet it might prove a better watch on streaming or disc, where you can fast-forward through the tedious bits.
That’s a great shame, because this film deals with some of the most important issues of our day. How do we stop humanity wilfully destroying the planet through greed, capitalism and global warming? How do we share out wealth globally so that all people get a fair share and no-one is left out? What would such a fair and just society look like? Should we enforce euthanasia at age 50? One might not always agree with the film’s conclusions, its blueprint for such a society, but these are worthwhile contributions to the debate. It’s a travesty that much of the filmmaking is so inept as to undermine an audience’s engagement with it.
Can I Get a Witness is out in cinemas in the UK on Friday, September 19th.
Trailer: