Living in the Future's Past (2018) Reviews

• Love Jeff Bridges in this film

  SamanthaMA2019-01-14

  "Much like "The Inside Job" did for the world of finance, "Living in the Future's Past" takes a more intellectual path to address this subject. The goal of this film is to help its audience truly understand the core issues we face as an interconnected world on the brink of something massively devastating. At the most basic level, that core issue is the consumption of energy. Humans need energy to live. Their fuel is food, and it takes energy to grow food, whether it be from more food to feed the animals we eat, fossil fuels to run the tractors and other machinery needed to grow plants, or the very manpower and calorie expenditure it takes for a laborer to produce goods. Everything is energy. Our economy, our currency, microwaves, and penguins, everything can be broken down to surplusses and deficits of energy. This movie also delves into our basic instincts as animals, including the way we think, and why those processes contribute to the ongoing crisis related to climate change. It also investigates how we have a psychological tendency towards tribalism, and how we look for ways to place blame on others to alleviate our own guilt about these issues. It looks at how we have a tendency to search for information that confirms our personal preexisting biases and how we often ignore any alternate ways of thinking that challenge those inclinations." - Thank you LOLO

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• Thoughtful Documentary

  PatriciaHs2019-01-14

  The film combines beautiful imagery with intellectually engaging content. It is a documentary that seeks to inspire its viewer to think about how they engage with the world rather than simply communicate to the viewer more scary facts about that world. Of particular interest is the attention it pays to energy. Energy, in all its forms, is shown to be the currency of life.

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• who we are, where we're going

  ferguson-62018-10-09

  Greetings again from the darkness. Director Susan Kucera and producer/narrator Jeff Bridges are smart enough to avoid cramming another preachy, guilt-laden, 'destroying the world' documentary down our movie-going throats (which is where popcorn belongs). Instead, they deliver a thought-provoking look at who we are, where we have come from, and where are we headed based on our actions and decisions of today. Breath-taking photography is on display throughout the film - much of it in the beautiful National Geographic style we have become spoiled with over the years. Some of it is even more dramatic and impactful. There are images of the ocean, the earth and of space. When Bridges' familiar and warm voice tells us "The sky itself is not the limit", we realize this movie is something different than expected. Many experts are paraded out, and they come from various segments of society: Ecological writer and researcher Timothy Morton, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander General Wesley Clark (if I messed up that title, I hope he forgives me), Ethnobotanist (had to look that up) Mark Plotkin, Astronaut Piers Sellers (since deceased), Physicist Leonard Mlodinow, as well as other scientists, politicians, and professors. The conceptual links between evolution and energy are a bit esoteric at first, but explanations and examples bring clarification. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the presentation is the blend of the scientific with the philosophical. The theory that what we "need" or "desire" drives our motivation on decisions and actions seems more than plausible. It is explained that we are "cultural beings" and our inherent need for group identity leads to the mass consumerism of society. The difference between adapting to our environment versus controlling it, is made clear by the comparison of bees and ants to our own mega-growth cities. Mr. Bridges' long time home was recently destroyed by the Montecito mudslides, but that fact is not part of the film. Ms. Kucera's film is not a lecture about climate change or how humans are ruining the planet, although it is certainly intimated. Instead, this is more about humanity - what makes us tick and what environmental challenges do we face now and in the future? How do we shift our decision-making from based on our own comfort and convenience to long term sustainability of our species (and others)? The film is presented well, thought-provoking, and yes, quite beautiful to look at.

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• The Super-organism at work

  samsolomon-303902019-02-13

  I liked the idea of the superorganism and the whole take on energy and surplus.

• missing the elephant in the room

  EuropeDweller2019-01-10

  Not a surprise: another sustainability documentary missing the elephant in the room. Interesting documentary with excellent points. Cheesy at the end. Poignantly incomplete. Whilst it is true a lifestyle based on ever-growing consumerism is at the core of the predicament we find ourselves in, there is no mention of the single lifestyle aspect that is at the top of the list: animal agriculture and our backward, if not barbaric, perception of nonhuman animal flesh as food.

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