Past Future – Against the Arrow

Flashback. Slow motion. Flashforward. Time lapse. The cinema exists to shake things up – a welcome interruption in regressive times. “In these days of war and rumors of war, haven’t you ever dreamed of a place where there is peace and security and where life is not a struggle but a lasting joy?” These are the opening credits of Frank Capra’s cult film » Lost Horizon” from 1937. The story tells of Westerners who are accepted into the monastic community of Shangri-La after a plane crash in the Himalayas. Totally isolated from the rest of the world, women and men there have realized the earthly Eden. Similar to images of the Maoist Cultural Revolution, one sees happy, uniformed people singing as they work collectively. The legend of Shangri-La popularized Tibet as a place of longing.

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In the film, however, Buddhist exoticism mixes with elements of European cultural avant-garde. Utopia is above all an uchrony. The pace of non-violent life has slowed down to such an extent that everyone looks much younger than their biological age and lives much longer than ordinary mortals. But a good utopia contains its own criticism, here in the form of Mary. The resident looks like a twenty-year-old, but is four times her age. And only has one thing on his mind: just get away from the paradisiacal standstill! The constant recurrence of the same thing is unbearable for her. She convinces one of the guests to escape with her, but as soon as she leaves Shangri-La, she noticeably ages and dies. That was the price for their freedom.

The science fiction film “Things to Come,” shot a few months before “Lost Paradise” based on a script by HG Wells, offers a diametrically opposed narrative. Was the inventor of the time machine really visionary? The film begins in the future year 1940 with the outbreak of a world war and air raids on cities. After decades of destruction and stagnation, a team of technocrats takes over the leadership. The benevolent dictators are concerned with overcoming ignorance and limitations at an ever-increasing pace. The population living underground is re-educated according to rationalistic principles. In order to banish wars, a peaceful goal is sought: the conquest of space – a program for eternity. “And when we have conquered all the mysteries of time, we are still at the beginning,” explains the chief engineer fanatically. Judging from a conversation Wells had with Stalin shortly before Things to Come, the conditions depicted correspond exactly to his view of socialism. But there is also resistance in this story. Incited by an artist, a mob demands a halt to progress: “We don’t want your inventions to constantly change our lives!” The first rocket to the moon can still take off before the Luddites occupy the spaceport. The film leaves open how the story ends.

At an epoch when the world crisis is coming to a head and in anticipation of the approaching catastrophe, two alternative time models are presented: deceleration here, accelerationism there. But although the authors obviously had a different intention, in both cases one tends to side with the anti-utopian minority. Because no matter whether the prescribed pace is slow or rapid, the humane time is the time of negation.

Guillaume Paoli is a philosopher and essayist. In 2024 he won the Günther Anders Prize for critical thinking for his book “Garbage and Spirit”.