O Futuro

Controversial The Future is a 2011 film that tells the story of an eccentric couple in their mid 30s who lives in a Los Angeles tiny and bohemian flat. Narrated by Paw-Paw, the injured stray kitten that they have adopted, the film tells how Sophie (Miranda July) and Jason (Hamish Linklater)'s lives change dramatically during the month that they have to wait for taking the cat home. Its initial naiveté ends up being blurred by the shadows provoked by the protagonists' decision to break with their daily routine to fight for their own dreams as if they have been told they have only four weeks to live. Soon the adventure is over and in their blind and desperate search of their paths their steps grow more and more away.

Heartbreaking, absurd, surrealistic, twee and bizarre at the same time, The Future is a piece of independent cinema that cannot be overlooked just because of the presence of disturbing elements such as the talking cat (whose high-pitched, childish voice rumbling in the dark is a powerful beginning by the way). Miranda July, director, writer and star of the film, is not just "being weird for the sake of being weird", but uses fantastic and bizarre images and situations to talk about our biggest taboos: the frailty of love, the futility of dreams, the anxiety about the passage of time and…the fear of death.

With their scruffy curls and their apathetic attitude towards life, Sophie and Jason seem to be the perfect couple. By seeing them lied down on the couch with their feet entangled, the spectator realizes that they felt really comfortable being together. The image of Jason peacefully sleeping over Sophie's chest (sweet for some, twee for others) is also a very faithful representation of true love, as well as Jason's attempt to stop time forever reflects very well how heartbreak feels. Miranda July said in an interview that she intended to describe: "the bittersweet vertigo of true love". Despite the audience does not doubt in the sincerity and profundity of the feelings of the couple, it is forced to see how circumstances and human weakness makes their love begin falling apart.

Firstly, to understand why they (as us ourselves) start panicking when the words "a 5 years commitment" are brought up, it is necessary to come back to the kitten wounded in her paw. Like Paw-Paw, who patiently waits for the couple to start his real life (she's even counting the days), we are always waiting for something good to happen, for the real beginning of our lives. And when we reach the thirties, we start to question ourselves if that beginning is not already gone, get depressed for having wasted the first half of our life and look at the future even more anxiously than before.

This is more or less what happens to Sophie and Jason, whom the idea of looking after a kitten -requiring a total care- for the next five years of their lives, make them think of their (scary) future: "We're 35 now ... by the time the cat dies, we'll be 40 ... and 40 might as well be 50 ... and after that, spare change." "Spare change?" "Less than a dollar-- not enough to get anything you want …" Jason's words reflect our anxiety about the passage of time as we cannot help feeling frustrated when the years pass by without us having reached the milestones we set for ourselves. Nonetheless in the film July, who said of life "I rush through it, like I'm being chased", warns us about the dangers that this feeling of "being always late" (late to live?) provokes. The Future not only make us consider how useless is to be always projecting into when it's going to be "better", but also make us question the importance of our lifetime dreams. It kind of helps us to get rid of the endless frustration caused by the contrast between our high expectations and our day-to-day reality. Like Sophie and Jason, everyone suffers from the Cervantine conflict, that is to say, the conflict between the world as we have imagined it and the world as it is. The story of Sophie and Jason somehow questions the futility of dreams, often unattainable and absurd (remembering Jason's: "I always thought I'd be a world leader").

How is it possible we cannot live happily just because we have not achieved some pretentious (generally childish) life goals? The Future, although has not the answer to the question, teaches us to open our eyes to our own limitations and stop feeling as if we deserved something better in life so as to start really enjoying ours. Life is not about waiting things to happen, but making things happen, as July said in No One Belongs Here More Than You: "Don't wait to be sure. Move, move, move"

July says that she intended to describe "the bittersweet vertigo of true love". Here an intense fear (vertigo) is intimately linked to an intense love, as imagining spending a whole life with someone is scary because from the beginning everyone already knows how the story ends, one dying in the arms of the other. Hence marriage makes you inevitably realize your own mortality and finiteness.

Some optimism is hidden, nevertheless, behind the pessimistic tone of the film. No matter what happens we always have to remember the enigmatic words of Joe Putterlik played by Joe Putterlik himself, an eccentric old man who Miranda met in a street market. This old man who participated in the film shortly before dying, tell us with his example that until you are dead, never is too late to live. So remember: "This is just the beginning".

"Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass, it is about learning to dance in the rain"

Anonymous

Hmmm...the summary title says it all. Not quite sure what this film is saying or trying to stimulate you into thinking about: lack of purpose in modern life, the small actions on which lasting love lives or dies, how much of ourselves do we show to each other, emotional paralysis in an atomised first world, the value of human connection above all else, is man designed to run on any other fuel than god, artistic frustration and how beautiful creation can take place as much in your living room as the main stage at the Met, people looking for a place in a senseless world instead of just getting on and helping people... On the downside the dialogue and some of the acting is of the low-burn, snail pace that can destroy any sense of mood or tension...but on the upside there are perhaps 10 moments of absolute beauty, each worth admission alone, and Miranda July is an open wound of a screen presence. And I'm still thinking about the end and all the bits in between. Personally I'm prepared to be slightly confused when I come out highly affected and thinking...

Miranda July, a woman who is hard to describe, i went to see a talk she was doing in Sydney when she brought The Future down under to screen at the Sydney Film Festival and i have to say i haven't ever met or hope to meet anyone like her, she seems like too much work, she analyzes everything in an artistic way that is kinda lame if you ask me, but anyway, her previous film Me And You And Everyone We Know was a movie that i caught late one night on SBS and i was obsessed with it for a while after, i went straight out and bought the DVD and just watched it repeatedly because i thought that it was so great. So when The Future finally got a cinema release in Australia i went to see it and i must say that i was a little let down by it, i don't know if i was in the wrong mood when watching it or something but i just really didn't enjoy it near as much as i thought i would.

I just found the whole thing to be too hipster and trying to be so arty, trying too hard and failing, there were a few parts that i really enjoyed in particular the cat commentary and the scenes with the older gentleman and the hairdryer, but with the exception of those scenes i found the whole thing pretty bland. I'm not sure if i just didn't get the message that was being put across but for me it just didn't work which is disappointing because i am a fan of Miranda July's style usually, i really enjoyed her collection of short stories.

I mean this movie is going to impress a lot of people i'm sure, however i just think its a major step back from the terrific MAYAEWK. If you're a fan see it, if you're not i wouldn't bother because you most probably will not enjoy it, i feel bad writing this bad review but "it's just my opinion, and what do i know".

If you enjoy it, great, if you don't, i told you so.

July's film depicts the quirkiness and clumsiness of those who are, as Conrad put it, about to cross the "twilight between youth and maturity", struggling with their call to adult life (in the form of parenthood, career, responsibility).

Although it speaks about a universal topic, there are many hints in the movie that point to our current generation. One for instance: accumulating whatever mundane knowledge on the internet, instead of sitting still and trying to think. So noughties.

I don't want to say more. If you are, let's say, in your mid 30s, urbanite, have studied liberal arts, and still struggle (or even better: wait) to define yourself, please watch this movie. You will find a part of yourself, and part of the answer to your questions.

Thanks to Miranda July and her movie called The Future, we are offered a complex and peculiar story surrounded by an environment of insecurity that makes us wonder about our personal life expectancies. A couple in their thirties decides to adopt an abandoned cat. The cat has an injured leg, and so, they have to wait for a month until it is recovered from its illness to take it with them. Meanwhile, they start to think that they have to enjoy their last month of freedom, because the cat would not allow them to do so any longer.

The cat only appears physically once at the movie, but it has much more importance than that. In fact, it is the narrator. It helps the audience to be put into context, and it sometimes gives sense to some parts of the film that seem to be incoherent. A part from having an important leading role, it will be the one to break out the whole action; the fact of having decided to adopt it will be the turning point of a story that, at first, seemed to be set in a calm atmosphere.

Some important aspects of life are tackled. For instance, the uncertainty of the future is clearly shown. We have to assume that that is the way it is, we are in control of it, but we are not able to know about it. So, life would not be all about wanting to know more about the future, but to be ready to face what comes next. If we stop to think about the future we do not have enough time to live the present. We spend our daily life worried about the future, and what if that future does not exist?

The entire film is enveloped in an enormous pessimism. The way in which the characters act makes us predict that there is no energy in them and they are likely to lose. Instead of taking into account the advantages that life can offer to them, they only see problems around. They even see the fact of taking care of an abandoned animal as a problem, when that should be taken as a satisfaction. That offers the audience the possibility to decide if that behavior is right for you or not; it is a film that would make people think. Furthermore, it is a movie that favors self-reflection. Although the development of the movie does not make the moral to become evident, one can use the film as the starting point of a personal thought with a clear moral: It does not really matter what will happen next, we have to enjoy the everyday and make the most of it.