Film Flam

It Takes A Village To Run A City

Ever Since the World Ended

INFO: Twelve years ago, a plague swept through, wiping out most of the population; in San Francisco, only 186 people remain. Two of them use jury-rigged batteries to power a camera and make a documentary. We see a variety of approaches to survival, from the artist and engineer who trade for their needs, to the surfers and woodsmen who fish and hunt, to the scavengers, and a communal farm. We also see how the community deals with those who threaten it, and how the youth are growing up with different values from those who knew our world. Written by Jon Reeves {jreeves@imdb.com} (via imdb)

The apocalyptic thriller is a genre that has become increasingly prevalent. I’m not necessarily convinced that this is a reflection of the current times and crises we face. I don’t feel something like 28 Days Later or The Road are created to explore our feelings about an uncertain future, but rather exist to exploit our fears of the current one.

Which is what makes Ever Since The World Ended interesting to me, there are themes of fear and panic of an uncertain future but the larger themes seem to have a basis in older  San Franciscan ideologies; DIY ethics, communal living, and a  respect for the ecology of that community.

These larger themes are what makes you want to see the film. The role of Adam Savage (of Mythbusters fame) is what drew me in. Savage plays a scientist / engineer who has managed to distill clean drinking water from the cities irrigation system (or something), and with some help created a sustainable power source from generators found on skyscrapers and high rise towers. Ideas like these are instantly cool, because of how thought out they seem to be.

Sadly that’s about all the thought that has gone into the films apocalyptic future. Apparently there was some kind of plague and now there’s only 186 people living in San Francisco. Two guys (Josh and Cal) have decided to document their living situations and walk around interviewing folks about how they’re living after the plague. This is a great narrative device and is used well in places. Problems arise when the real life filmmakers decide to insert themselves into the narrative of the film. This type of meta filmmaking is always an irritant for me and reeks of the vanity that is sometimes found in independant cinema.

The beauty and crux of the film comes from performance. There are other things, sure, but the core of the film isn’t the idea of San Francisco surviving in a world where the majority of its population has died off — its how this idea motivates an actor to make certain choices. Because so much of this film’s information is imparted by having an actor recall something, it leads me to believe that it was mostly improvised¹ (I don’t know whether it was or wasn’t.) and it helps carry you through some less than interesting segments.

The less interesting segments come whenever the filmmakers decide that they want to explore sociological themes about justice, criminality, and other “edgy” themes that the bigger budgeted studio apocalyptic films deal with². The problem is the film seems to think that  its exploring territory that hasn’t been staked out yet, and it hasn’t, at least not by mainstream apocalyptic films, but the ideas of what to do with with a renegade citizen or other undesirables, have been explored for decades in the Apocalyptic Thriller’s sister genre: the Western.

The Western with its explorations of lawlessness and fear of the outsider has been a hallmark of nihilism in American filmmaking for a long time now, but nihilism isn’t really what makes Ever Since The World Ended interesting, so it see it go down these silly avenues in search of “higher art” gets boring and trite.

What’s fun is the exploration of creation in the face of destruction. In particular the scenes with Adam Savage seem to be the most fun for me. Savage makes a point that in 30-40 years time, when his children are his age, they will no longer be scavenging the earth, they will have found a way to sustain themselves. They will have been forced to create a new world for themselves as the world they inherited was too broken to be repaired. Much like independent filmmakers, they will forced to learn that they do not have to create in the same fashion or structure that came before them; the world belongs to them, all they have to do is see it in a new way.

1.Handheld low budget filmmaking, coupled with actors who pause in awkward places and stammer when recalling details that you would assume would be seared into their memories, tends to strike me as improv-y

2.Which usually concern themselves with larger ideas about survival and the nature of hope.