Of the Sundance titles I had the pleasure of watching this year, Sophie Barthes’ The Pod Generation was my favourite. It was the kind of sci-fi that made me smile where scientific advancement is both treated as a societal aid but, when unchecked as detrimental. Scientific advancement itself is not bad, only when we forget what makes us human does it become a tool for evil. That excites me.
The film centers on a couple, technology-driven Rachel (played by Emilia Clarke), who trains A.I. to do executive tasks (which another person questions whether they are training their own replacements), and Alvy (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor), who is a botanist and doesn’t like the A.I. world his wife subscribes to. When his wife accepts them a coveted spot to have a baby grown in an artificial womb, aka a pod. This creates tension in their relationship, but honestly, you struggle to understand their initial relationship as they seem to have nothing in common. Rachel seems to detest all things nature as much as Alvy does A.I.
However, as they both struggle to come to terms with what growing a baby in a pod actually means, we also see them grow together as a couple.
The Pod Generation world is the glossy artificial world that feels like what I imagine it would be like to live in an Apple Store. Aesthetically pleasing colours that match in a shiny way. With a kind of 1950s colour palette, which fit with the clothing that felt like it was from the past (but everything old is new again). Now Alvy’s greenhouse in their apartment contrasts the rest of the city. It has greenery growing everywhere. You can practically smell the dirt through the screen.
The adults in the world are constantly trying to dismiss the importance of Alvy’s work, and keeping green spaces around. This is something botanist in our real-world face, as I’ve heard from my sister who is in that space. However, the kids he’s teaching when faced with nature, for what appears to be the first time in their lives, are fascinated. While we first see this in a scene where a kid eats a real fresh fig for the first time, the scene of this I found more poignant was when he asked the kids to hug a tree or to touch one. They give full body commitment and joy as they engaged with nature. Connecting with something they hadn’t even known they were missing. It was as telling as when a parent on the school tour asked why her pod-birthed kid had never dreamed.
It would’ve been easy to make the science itself the villain in this film. It wasn’t portrayed as that, but how people utilize the science behind the pods, amongst other things, created the unease. The concept of the external womb isn’t a problem; it is the outside forces trying to put a disconnect between the parents and the growing child that becomes the problem. This was a much more interesting choice.
It’s been almost a decade since Sophie Barthes’ Madame Bovary. I know in the world of film, some projects gestate much longer than a fetus, and plenty never come to fruition, but I hope we don’t have to wait another decade to see her next work.
The Pod Generation premiered at Sundance in their Premieres section. It was awarded the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and Sundance Institute Science-in-Film initiative top cash prize of $20,000.
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