Showing @ Filmhouse, Edinburgh until Sat 26 Jan (now finished)
Mathieu Roy, Harold Crooks / Canada / 2011 / 86 min
Sensationalist and melodramatic, Surviving Progress relies on impressive cinematography to bulk out an information-poor script and an irritatingly slow relay time. Based on the bestseller A Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright, the film attempts to evaluate the current ideal of progress within modern capitalist societies; hoping to illustrate how such a model cannot be sustainable long-term.
From the outset the film is vague. Interesting narrative threads are repeatedly opened, and then dropped, with a more in-depth analysis patronisingly avoided. What we are treated to instead is a chugging hour and a half filled with too many general sweeping statements, and crucially, too few factual elements. The central message oft re-iterated, is as clear and as cliché as it ever was – that humanity maltreats the world, akin to locusts or similar. What is presented as a new slant to this dilemma becomes yet another telling off by guilt inducing self-righteous experts, condemning everything about, well, everyone. There are many interesting ideas raised. Unfortunately most are not explored to any kind of level which would lend credibility or spark support for the case. What is the case? It remains unclear. What results is a distinctly unsatisfying taster of differing theories of our contemporary age’s failings. A lacklustre outcome.