In the last part of Plato’s Republic, Socrates tells the story of Er, a soldier who died in battle, then went on a journey through heaven and hell. Er witnesses the Spindle of Necessity and hears the cries of the damned. Finally, Er visits the banks of the river Lethe, where the souls of the dead picked new lives, drink from the river to forget their past lives, and are then resurrected. It is a striking story with some of the most memorable imagery in Western literature.
Kelly Whitlock’s short film, Survey, takes a different, more modern approach to the theory of the afterlife and resurrection. Whitlock in effect asks the question: What if life, death and the afterlife are not run by gods or even super-advanced machines like we see in The Matrix. What if it’s all run by some sort of corporation? And not a really cool corporation with cool offices like Google or Apple, but a really boring one, more like a government regulated utility company?
The film is quite simple and has only 2 scenes. In one, we find a hapless middle-aged man riding his bicycle through the snowy streets of Toronto. He’s smiling and happy, but not for long. In the next scene, he’s in the drabbest possible office. There’s the hideous indoor-outdoor carpet, the bare beige walls. The awful chair. And there’s a phone on the ground. There’s no network of human beings in pods or resistance fighters flying around in space ships with Biblical names. There isn’t even a window.
For the rest of the film, our hero takes a customer satisfaction survey that could have been sent out by Home Depot or Walmart. Whoever is in charge is the very definition of faceless – we never see anyone except the dead man and a phone. No one greets him at the door or offers him a glass of water. It’s all very rude and impersonal. The only saving grace is the fun jazz tune playing in the background. Although I can’t be sure if this is actually playing in the office or if this is just for the sake of the audience.
The film raises a number of fascinating philosophical questions. For one thing, a surprising number of people, including Elon Musk, believe that we do in fact live in some sort of simulation. But what these people tend to assume is that the simulation is highly advanced and run by some super superior governing intelligence. But again, what if we all live in a simulation that’s poorly run and doesn’t have the budget to do things properly?
Among the questions, some are obvious and straightforward: What did you think about the length of your life? How would you rate your body? But far more interesting are the later questions. The protagonist is asked if he’s satisfied with the number of experiences he’s had. This is quite interesting because it assumes that one of the keys to a well-lived life is having many ‘experiences’. The phone isn’t specific about what kinds of experience, but the key seems to be the number. Experiences could mean, eating at a lot of great restaurants, visiting lots of famous places, having lots of sexual partners. The question could have been framed differently: Are you satisfied with the quality of your experiences? After all, seeing one’s child smile for the first time is worth any number of visits to Paris or Rome. But the presumption here is that experiences should be quantified somehow, as if, at the end of our lives there will be a moment when we tally up everything we’ve seen and learned and then we will make a decision about whether is was satisfactory or not. I think this presumption is in fact at work in many, if not most peoples’ lives today. Perhaps it was not always like this. Perhaps in the 11th century the phone would have asked the man if he thought he’d lived honourably or not, or if he thinks he’s saved or not. But framing the question this way does shed an interesting light on what we assume makes a good life.
Similarly thought-provoking is the question of whether we’d recommend our life to someone else. If we were privately dissatisfied with our lives, would we ever admit this to another? Some lives are obviously not fit to be recommended and others obviously are. But for most of us, what would we honestly say if we popped off right this minute?
The film is only a little over two minutes long and I assume was made on a shoestring budget. But it’s thought-provoking, it looks and sounds good and it’s lots of fun.
© 2021. UniversalCinema Mag.