Index Zero (2014)

directed by Lorenzo Sportiello
Italy (filmed in Bulgaria)
82 minutes
3.5 stars out of 5
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I was interested in this because the two-sentence synopsis was really vague and I didn't know quite what it meant: "2035, United States of Europe. Some humans are not sustainable anymore." I thought it would be interesting if the concept of "sustainability" in this film was treated as an extension of the personal-responsibility rhetoric preached by large corporations pretending to be eco-friendly. Like how brands squawk about how you're a bad person if you use plastic straws, but meanwhile they use more water in a single day than the population of a small country. I thought maybe Index Zero took place in a world where people were punished for not practicing "sustainability"- I.E., "forget your reusable shopping bags and we will take away your food ration". 

It turns out that the real explanation is a lot simpler; in a time of overpopulation, some quasi-governmental organization decides which people use "too much" resources, and the ones whose needs can be balanced out become "sustainable". Those who would be too much of a hassle to care for (sick/elderly/pregnant/just "unwanted") are unsustainable, and are abandoned by society. Index Zero did a really great job at worldbuilding, in my opinion, and I'm not sure if the idea of a United States of Europe was an intentional jab at the United States of America and all our failings, but I'm pretending it was. 

The best thing about this film are the scenes of the scrim- the din of crowds of unwashed, angry people congregating in shady "markets" and masses that are hit and abused by rich people in riot gear. When the protagonists lose themselves in these faceless groups of people who the privileged of society wish would go rot somewhere out-of-sight, I felt like this film was doing a better job depicting the anonymity that would come with being lumped into a category of "unwanteds" than most.

This next paragraph is gonna talk about the death of a major character so... watch out. The way the woman half of the lead couple was treated irked me in multiple ways, but her death at the end of the film felt more like a dispensing-with than any kind of resolution to her story. Ironically, natural pregnancies are frowned upon by the people who decide who's sustainable or not in the film, and if she had just used the artificial womb promoted by the elites, she would have stayed alive. So I'm not sure what the point to her dying in childbirth was other than to make her a martyr or just to get rid of the pesky wimminz.

All in all, this isn't the very best film I've ever seen, but it's grim enough that I enjoyed it as a film about our ruling class finally just coming out and saying they don't want certain people to be alive. I can definitely see things like this happening in the future and in fact happening all around us- just in ways we don't necessarily pay attention to.