«Apocalypse 2024», a laugh-out-loud initiation film

Cinema Wednesdays - Special edition: The coronaretrospective of anticipation cinema - Jonas Follonier

There's a lot to say about a film like this. A real discovery for me, who knew so little about science-fiction and anticipation films. Apocalypse 2024 (A boy and his dog) is both a powerful piece of entertainment and a tale of initiation, which I heartily recommend at a time when we have time to rediscover the history of cinema. Story.

If some joker had told me I'd take seven A4 pages of notes while watching a sci-fi movie, I'd have laughed in his face. And yet... the curiosity nourished by the spirit of journalism makes us richer. It forges our cinematic gaze and imbues us with the knowledge and sensitivity needed to discover a genre. Apocalpyse 2024. English title, A Boy and His Dog. It didn't take long for my heart to fall in love with the film. At first, the emotion was inexplicable, accompanying the discovery of a film, but also of a tradition: that of anticipation cinema, a sub-genre of science-fiction cinema. At the end of the day, the terms don't matter: works of this nature venture to question the future in order to question the present. I'm convinced of this now, having done a lot of reading and thinking since watching the film.

2024 as seen by 1975

2024, in a world that has seen four world wars. We know about the first two. The third was a planetary conflict that lasted from 1950 to 1983, known as the «Cold and Hot War», a reference to the Cold War that was in full swing in 1975, the year of the film's release. The Fourth World War lasted just five days in 2007, but it marked the end of civilization with nuclear bombs. The story takes place seventeen years after the last war. The world resembles a vast desert, with very little to eat and every man for himself. A war of all against all. A sexist world where men are only after one thing: food and sex. That's really only one level of the world. But I'll leave that dimension to you, so that you can have the pleasure of discovering the plot.

Among the oddballs who populate this world with its dirty western ambience is Vic, the main character in this film inspired by the short story A boy and his dog. As the title suggests, he is accompanied by a dog. The film begins with a discussion between the two - yes, the dog speaks, or rather a voice speaks through him, it's telepathy, and it's very funny - while an undoubtedly bloody conflict unfolds next door. It soon becomes clear that the dog is one step ahead of his master. In fact, the animal calls himself Prof. He becomes the bearer of a historical memory and advises Vic on his actions, from simple everyday adventures to the quest for the afterlife, where the dog wants to go with his master.

«Once again, I'm going to remind you of these historic events. And please try not to forget them.»

Why is the role of teacher-narrator assigned to a dog? Firstly, because’Apocalypse 2024 is first and foremost entertainment. A sort of well-crafted B-movie. A film that makes you laugh, laugh a lot, relying on variations in language registers, surreal telepathy between the guy and his dog, and a series of adventures, each more incredible than the last, even if they're not very spectacular. The film obeys the rules of science fiction at its most ridiculous: monsters, villains, subterranean worlds, noises from beep (BIP, BIIP, BIIIIIIP), metal structures (why is metal so futuristic? as if we were still in the Stone Age!). But behind these antics, which are pleasant in themselves, lies a deeper meaning. This is to be found above all in the dog's words.

«I haven't tringed for six weeks».»

Teacher: «There's a female here.»
Vic: «Are you crazy?»
Teacher: «I'm telling you there's a female.»

With this brilliant dialogue, Apocalypse 2024 exploits the animal side of the dog, to show that it is common to man. But the film also exploits the «dog» side of the dog. Dog as snoop. Dog as companion. Dog as moron. Dog as villain. All contradictions with which the protagonist must come to terms. Better still, the dog is a metaphor for his master, who is the real master. Isn't it said that dogs resemble their masters? Well, here, the film has made that reality even worse. The post-nuclear-war world is populated by mutant-dogs, either as intelligent as humans, or more so. So, Prof does everything Vic doesn't dare to do - apart from rape, which Vic ends up not committing, much to our delight.

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Vic, it's true, is undistinguished. «Don't fuck with me! - That's very vulgar. - Well, that's just it, I'm very vulgar. [....] Bitch! - I don't blame you for what we did, I even enjoyed it. Would you like to do it again?» Today, such a dialogue would arouse the ire of the World, of Release, from Nouvel Obs, of Télérama, and so on, simply because these once open-minded media have fallen into the trap of self-righteousness. When in reality, this hilarious sequence simply shows that Vic can't play tough guy. He's a prisoner of his beauty, and therefore of his goodness. It's no doubt the class he's enslaved to that prevents him from being a real man. bad boy all the way.

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The fact remains that our «hero» is no paragon of virtue. «I haven't tringed for six weeks».», he says at the beginning, before setting off in search of a female he simply wants to drill a hole in, like a hole in a wall with a drill. There are plenty of holes in this film, where nothing is left to chance. An opening here, a cavity there. An orifice? You name it. And so it is that Vic discovers the naked body of a woman through a cracked wall. This is the woman he's been looking for (in every sense of the word). The scene is voyeuristic. Erotic, above all. With the female model of the time, slim, round-faced, with blond hair à la Marilyn Monroe, a soft, childlike voice and a touch of the silly. It's the beast in the truest sense of the word, the dog, who remains Vic's true companion, because he's always telling her the truth. Starting with this one:

Human beings stink

«Actually, you're not a nice guy, Vic. You're really not to be messed with.»

This is what the film tells us, under the guise of denouncing war: human beings stink. Human beings suck. And human beings suck in the truest sense of the word: just look at the current situation with Covid-19. Once the pandemic is over, they'll be afraid of something else. Of the future of the planet, which echoes the notion of apocalypse, of course. But the matter goes deeper than that: Man, by definition, fears for his life as well as his death. He's afraid of experiencing difficult things, he's afraid that death will take his life, and he's afraid of knowing that he's going to die. how it feels to die. Fear is essential to our condition. Aristotle defined fear as the emotion that grips us in the face of an evil deemed inescapable. Living and dying, the two things par excellence that are imposed on us - and then of course there's the father, the mother, the stupid aunt, the annoying cousin and that wart you've had on your foot since you were a child.

According to Aristotle, what is the opposite of fear in the realm of passions? Courage. It's a good thing that this disposition of the body, complemented by the spirit, is at the heart of post-apocalyptic films. It takes courage in Apocalpyse 2024, To face howlers, to overcome intuitive machine-men, to find food, to find a woman to make love to... This is the most basic courage on earth. Not the courage of some intellectual when faced with some blah, blah, blah question - a courage that's just as admirable, but not here. Young Vic and his dog Prof confront the idea of survival, which paradoxically has something less mysterious than that of life. Life/survival: it's tempting to switch from this distinction to that of man/superman. But there's no superman here. Or sub-human, for that matter. There's a man shown in all the baseness of his condition. And there's the dog who makes the character realize it. And above all, to us, the viewers.

Apocalpyse 2024, This philosophical western at the height of man and dog - its format is Techniscope - is therefore pessimistic in its assessment of human nature, and it's not for nothing that it makes us howl with laughter. But it is optimistic insofar as it is a film of initiation. Man can advance towards goodness, knowledge and happiness by following in the footsteps of a mentor, in this case a dog. Without revealing the outcome of the plot here, everything obviously revolves around this relationship between the man and his companion. When they have to part about halfway through the film, their farewell resembles a break-up in love, the most banal yet tragic thing in the world. Except that between them, it's much more than love. It's friendship. It's admiration. It's transmission.

Write to the author: jonas.follonier@leregardlibre.com

Photo credit: © LQ:JAF