I have seen "The Future" and it's not funny.

A Review of Miranda July's The Future

Miranda July strikes me as the rare truly original thinker, whose creative impulses don’t conform, at crucial moments, to generic conventions.  I enjoyed her 2005 feature film, Me and You and Everyone We Know, and her 2007 book of short stories, No One Belongs Here More Than You.  Her new movie, The Future, was recently released on video, and I can’t say I’ve been looking forward to any art event more than I’ve been looking forward to seeing this film.  At first glance, those high expectations may have been an obstacle for me—and, possibly, for many fans of July.  Though the film has a similar feel to July’s other work, it’s darker, less fun, and less hopeful.  Ultimately, I respect the artistry of July’s storytelling, here, and find the movie truly challenging and valuable--an examination of our post-millennial moment.  On the brink of collapse, how are we to behave?  What value do our commitments to love and social responsibility have, now?  Is it really too late?

The Future focuses on a couple, Sophie and Jason, 35 years old and suffering in their faltering romantic relationship.  Individually, they are both at crisis points: unsatisfied with their jobs and daily routines, they are seeking purpose, acceptance, and even simple relief from the daily strain of living without much money in contemporary Los Angeles.  While The Future has all the signature elements of Miranda July’s sensibility, including Miranda July, herself, in the central role, on a moment-to-moment basis, the film is less dynamic than much of July’s work.  The soundtrack is spare—at moments, the film is almost uncomfortably silent.  The palette is dark, with many interior scenes cast in deep reds and browns.  There’s less quirky humor, and although there is one child in a supporting role, the film doesn’t focus on the often comical nature of childhood “innocence.”  Overall, the feel is quiet, contemplative, verging on monotonous.

I think the aim is to give the film over to the characters, and allow their sincere explorations, as they push toward their own breaking points, to captivate us.  But the risk is boredom, frankly, and the movie wobbles along the edge of that abyss for most of the first hour, before the characters’ crises come to full-bloom.  Then, reacting to new pressures, Sophie and Jason find themselves in their own strange and dark new worlds.  After the breaking point, when July’s imagination splits open the world of her main characters, the film gathers some momentum.  Jason stops time, literally, and eventually has to restart it by walking to the ocean and physically churning the tides into action again.  The talking cat who narrates, occasionally, dies while waiting for Sophie and Jason to adopt it, but not before offering some metaphysical consolation to all of us weary travelers.  Sophie pulls a large yellow shirt up over her legs and over her torso and over her head and then does a strangely beautiful dance.  The movie’s one child buries herself in the yard for a kind of ghoulish overnighter, then comes inside in the wee hours, cold and frightened and dirty, looking like a horror movie zombie. 

If it seems unfair to compare the movie to Me and You…, the comparison is inevitable.  The characters in The Future all sound the same—the same as each other and the same as all the characters in Me and You….  For many writers, I think this would be a definitive weakness.  I’m not sure if it is for July—it’s either a weakness or it’s the main strength of her work.  All of her characters are capable of articulating existential insights in almost any situation, and if they do it in a voice that seems more like their author’s than their own, well… at least the insights are quirky, interesting, and engaging.  Maybe it’s fair to say that July is almost more of a poet than a fiction writer, in that all of her inventions ultimately seem like products of the artist’s core sensibility.  She doesn’t give the world a voice.  She puts her own voice into a world of her own creation.

The Future, to me, is a darker version of Me and You….  In the end, our characters-in-crisis, Sophie and Jason, don’t find a sense of redeeming hope, as do the saintly believer-figures of July’s first wide-release feature.  Instead, they live despairing lies in a world on the edge of collapse.  Settling for the comforts of oblivious suburban affluence is a viable option.  Fighting for environmental improvement is a fool’s game.  The movie may not be cynical, but it’s close.  Its fittingly flat, inconclusive ending may (or may not) put Sophie and Jason back together, but it doesn’t offer them much hope for a valuable, productive, romantically happy or socially significant future.  Maybe that’s not cynicism.  Maybe that’s realism.  And maybe the hope of the film doesn’t lie in its characters’ actions, but instead lies in our own reaction to them.  If even Miranda July’s characters are sunk in the powerlessness of our moment, then maybe we really need to evaluate our lives, question what we stand for, and re-commit ourselves to the values we’ve let slip away.  Maybe Sophie and Jason are wrong.  Maybe it’s not too late:

“I mean it’s probably too late for all this, anyway…. You know how in cartoons, when a building gets hit with a wrecking ball, right before the building falls down, there’s always this moment where it’s perfectly still, right before it collapses.  We’re in that moment.  The wrecking ball has already hit, and this is the moment before it all falls down….  That’s just my gut feeling….   I thought this was great.  All of this.  You know, the grass.  The people in the houses.  The cars and the TV and the music.  I loved this place.”