The Congress’ live action, animation, and AI combo makes it the most 2023 movie

It feels like you can’t go a day without hearing about a new and mind-boggling application of AI technology.

From online personalities like Twitch streamer Amouranth who created a companion chatbot after her model to James Earl Jones’ iconic portrayal of Darth Vader being immortalized by a Ukrainian AI company, the rise of these technologies has sparked a schism in the entertainment industry . The current Writers Guild of America strike is partly due to fears that AI will be used to undermine the work of writers and directors. That’s not to mention how these technologies merge with deepfake technology designed to subvert our concept of shared reality and weaponize our biases and preferences, or how AI is used to create lackluster imitations of artists’ work .

All this makes me think The Congres, Ari Folman’s 2013 hybrid animated sci-fi drama starring Robin Wright. Based on the 1971 novel by Stanisław Lem The Futurological CongressWright plays a fictionalized version of herself who, 23 years after her breakthrough, stars in The princess bride, is in the downturn of her career. Strapped for money to take care of her ailing son Aaron (Kodi Smit-McPhee) with no one willing to hire her, Robin is offered a one-time deal to sell her likeness to the fictional “Miramount Studios” and quit acting. The alternative is to be relegated to the ash heap of history and virtually “exist” from then on, as studios will outright refuse to employ flesh-and-blood actors.

When the deal is pitched, Miramount executive Jeff Green (Danny Huston) tells Robin they want to “completely” scan her. “Your body, your face, your emotion, your smile, your tears, your cumming, your happiness, your depressions, your fears [and] desires. We want to taste you, we want to keep you, we want… all this, this thing called… Robin Wright.” It’s a chilling scene that highlights the film’s core question: What is the importance of people making art, and can audiences care?

Folman, who had been working on the script for the film for over 19 years, was amazed at how his original idea of ​​a machine that scans and records a person’s likeness actually existed. The scene where Robin is scanned features an extensive 360-degree camera rig similar to that used by video game companies such as Kojima Productions and Santa Monica Studio to record actors’ performances to create high-quality in-game models. “When I wrote it, I had no idea that if I came to LA I would see this incredible scanning machine at USC where we could film the scene,” Folman said in a statement. 2013 interview with IndieWire. “It was already there, everything was ready for us.”

In 48 minutes, The Congres changes medium completely, as the barren expanse of the Mojave Desert is transformed into a phantasmagoric wonderland rendered in a Fleischer-inspired animation à la Betty Bob or Popeye the Sailor. In The Congrescommercial psychedelics and algorithmically generated entertainment have created a world where the rich and powerful are completely removed from reality, allowing them to craft their likenesses to resemble any of the countless characters and actors whose likenesses are owned by Miramount Studios.

Image: Drafthouse Movies

Upon arriving at Abrahama City, Miramount’s luxury headquarters in the future, a now-animated version of the “real” Robin Wright is shown a commercial for an action movie starring her digitally replicated self, as well as a press interview featuring this artificial Robin. passionately discusses the social relevance of the film. It’s a scene that drives home briskly The Congres‘ thematic focus on the commodification of art and the alienation of artistic labour. Robin Wright de person is divorced from Robin Wright the brandand the anguish of this separation causes the former to lash out against the artifice of this strange, terrifying future in search of true connection.

Robin learns that the entertainment industry as she knows it will be replaced by a process where customers will simply marinate in the comforts afforded by nostalgia. “This whole structure won’t exist,” Jeff tells Robin. “The screenwriter who needs his antidepressants; the ex-Russian storyboard artist with the drinking problem; the animators always behind the deadline; those idiots who fall in love with their computer characters; the special effects people – they can all go fuck themselves. The Congres is a film that taps into the anti-art sentiments of our present day, predicting a future where our humanity is forfeited in exchange for mindless gratification on a superficial level.

Image: Drafthouse Movies

The Congres fluctuates wildly between reality and fiction, jumping through time and media to paint a looming post-human future where people are no longer able to tell the difference between what feels right and what’s true and personal. It’s a deeply exaggerated dystopia, but one that nonetheless feels eerily in sync with our current cultural moment. A time when art in all media is increasingly confused with ‘content’ and artists of all stripes are merely ‘content creators’, where parasocial relationships between celebrities and audiences are on the rise, and where the work of artists, animators, directors, screenwriters, and more are belittled as that labor becomes increasingly indispensable to a culture obsessed with the breathless continuation of IP-driven entertainment.

Like Richard Kelly’s Southland stories, The Congres is a film that feels unmistakably of its time and at the same time ahead of the game. It’s disorienting and strange, a phantasmagorical odyssey of an aging star passionately arguing for the value of human art and human connection in a world that has withdrawn into itself to face an increasingly uncertain future. It is hands down the most 2023 movie of 2013.

The Congres is available to stream on Hulu.