Living in the Future's Past

First published in The Santa Barbara Independent - Friday, February 2, 2018

From the category of docs, one of the more powerful entries is Living in the Future Past, which had its world premiere last night in the Metro movieplex compound. Director Susan Kucera has achieved something masterful with her film, an entry in the growing population of ecological cautionary tales beautiful, nature-affirmative, humanity-questioning imagery and intelligent commentary, akin to Koyaanisqatsi (“world out of balance”) and Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth franchise, but expanding the canvas to include psychological and anthropological side trips.

Not at all incidentally, an area connection is Santa Barbara’s own beloved celebrity amongst us, Jeff Bridges, who served as the film’s producer, narrator, and “presenter.” He punctuates the fascinating commentary by a range of scientists, psychologists, and those in the know with more ground-level speech, as when he says, “We are physical and biological beings living in a sea of cosmic energy. That sounds trippy, and it is.” Trippy and true, like the film itself.

As an intriguing side note, many know about Bridges personal, residential travails, living in the crosshairs of the January 9 Montecito mudslide and making his escape with his wife, Susan, by heading up to the roof and being airlifted by helicopter. This is not the time or space to consider the role of climate change in the cycle of drought/fire/flood visited upon our area in recent years, but the thought hums in the background of the film, and the producer’s own mudslide story. Bridges himself wasn’t able to make the premiere, but he appeared in a video statement from Vancouver, where he is shooting a film. He spoke briefly about the central tenet of the film, which makes the pressing point that now is the past of the future, demanding action on our parts to prevent catastrophic eventualities. “What kind of future would you like to see?” he asked the audience, by video proxy. “Explore that.” That’s precisely this film’s exploratory m.o.