Tina Kakadelis
Every film critic has a genre or trope they tend to avoid. For me, it’s time travel. My brain quickly starts to wander as I worry about the logistics of everything. Every once in a while, though, a time travel movie comes along that’s just too intriguing for me to ignore. Most recently, that is Jenna Cato Bass’ Toronto International Film Festival world-premiering Future Tense. Coming from South Africa, Cato Bass’ film is billed as a work about climate change and reckoning with the history of the country.
Set in the near future, Future Tense exists in a world where time travel has become a reality. According to Article One of the International Treaty of Inter-Chronological Travel and the Use of the Past, “The exploration and use of the Past shall be carried out for the benefit of all countries, irrespective of economic or scientific development and shall be the province of all humankind.” Trips to the past are treated as vacations for the wealthy because of the near-dystopian contemporary world, and Lwando (Lawrence Maleka) has won an excursion to 1647. He invites his girlfriend, Tara (Kristen Raath), to experience South Africa before colonialism. When the couple arrives in the Past, each discovers the other has ulterior motives for this trip.
Before Black Mirror lost its edge, Future Tense would have fit nicely in the earlier seasons as a high-concept science fiction narrative driven by interpersonal dynamics. Lwando and Tara are grappling with the current state of South Africa, but as an interracial couple, they’re also aware of their nation’s history and its lingering present-day effects. The year they’re returning to, 1647, is the year of the wreck of the Nieuw Haarlem off the coast of the Cape of Good Hope. The BBC calls this event “the shipwreck that forever changed South Africa.” When discussing why they would be sent back to experience 1647, Tara says it’s because “nothing happened” then, but Lwando counters and says nothing happened “for whom? Imagine what Africa could do with a century of freedom.”
Time travel isn’t just a vacation or a chance for a couple to work through deep-seated issues. It’s a means of righting the wrongs of the past. Future Tense has more than enough around this thematic pillar, and it doesn’t come across as gimmicky. Playing with the history books has become a tool in an activist’s toolbelt in this film, and while some lasting questions about the logistics may linger, they cannot derail the compelling conversations Future Tense creates. Lwando and Tara are opposites. One of the first things we learn about their relationship is that Tara was late on their first date. She’s late again when they’re due to leave on their trip. Lwando is pragmatic, but willing to take extreme risks in the name of change. Tara is hopeful, but thinks on a smaller scale when it comes to fighting for revolution. Together, they find themselves with an opportunity to fix the decisions of the past that have led to their current existence, but struggle to comprehend the other’s point of view.
In the Past, Tara asks Lwando who he wants to save the world for. By his own admission, Tara is the most important person in his life, and he has no family left in the present. Even if we don’t live to see it, is the world worth saving? Future Tense is full of musings like this. In the future, space travel is for the middle class, but the people with real money have laid claim to the past. It’s a world that doesn’t seem too far-fetched from our own. Future Tense is born out of the sense of fear that hangs over humanity. How can we begin to save things when it all feels so dire? Are small changes going to tip the scales, or do we need to turn to more extreme reactions? Future Tense is high-concept science fiction in its finest form, never once forgetting that humanity is at the center of it all, for better or for worse.
