VERDICT: The surrealism of images created by artificial intelligence evokes the unreliability of memory and elusive nature of a dystopian plague in this sci-fi short.
There are evident echoes of Chris Marker’s La Jetee in Andrea Gatopoulos’ The Eggregores Theory.
Comprised of images created using artificial intelligence, the film employs a comparable monochrome collage aesthetic to tell a similar, though also very different, dystopian tale. One of the opening short films of this year’s settimana internazionale della critica at the Venice Film Festival, The Eggregores Theory is about an unnamed narrator reflecting on his past – one in which the social fabric was decimated when language itself became corrupted and was responsible for a devastating illness that swept through the populace. The strange AI compositions seem to both represent the dreamlike elements of memory but also the corrosive morphing of a civilisation gradually deprived of language and communication.
The story is given as the context for a doomed relationship, that fell victim to the paranoia of the populace amid the increasing oppression of the state in the face of an epidemic whose exact cause could not be pinpointed. To begin with, nobody knew precisely which word was causing the illness, when they identified it, it could not be shared for obvious reasons. Suddenly, different words began to spread the infection. The fear of language and communication became a fear of information. Restrictions on reading and speaking became the burning of books and the destruction of archives.
All of this is conveyed via the narrator’s (David Rumsey) recollection of the events, accompanied by haunting and evocative AI images. In many instances, they are clearly supposed to be representations of the unfolding narrative but by the nature of their phantastic blemishes and the algorithm’s miscalculations, they uncannily become more suggestive of the filled-in memory gaps of the protagonist and the ways in which the world becomes contorted by fear. This is never more painfully obvious than in the acceptance of the new normal that both the narrator and his former love heartbreakingly share. It’s a very clever use of the uneasiness of AI -generated imagery in portraying an unsettling dystopian vision that is not devoid of its own nightmarish beauty.
Director, screenplay: Andrea Gatopoulos Cast: David Rumsey Producers: Ariens Damsi, Luigi Mascolo, Marco Crispano, Andrea Gatopoulos, Orazio Guarino, Marco Santoro Editing: Zhenia Kazankina, Andrea Gatopoulos Sound Tommaso Barbaro, Luca Canzano Music: Giorgio Labagnara Production companies: Eliofilm, Il Varco Cinema, Naffintusi (Italy) Venue: Venice Film Festival (settimana internazionale della critica) In English 15 minutes