Can I Get A Witness? Review: Didactic Eco-Fiction

In the ideologically dubious and overwritten Can I Get A Witness?, a young woman gets her first job on a future Earth where humans must die at 50.

When we meet Kiah (Keira Jang), daughter of Oh’s Ellie, it’s her first day on the job using her sketching skills to document the ‘end of life’ (or EOL) ceremonies of local citizens. These events are an important ritual on a future Earth where all humans must give up their right to life at the age of 50, a policy that, among other societal changes, has ostensibly saved the world from collapse. Technology and travel are also heavily restricted, so Kiah knows nothing of the digital world, nor the physical one outside the confines of her pastoral home.

Over two days we learn more about this new civilisation and the circumstances that brought it about, mainly thanks to Kiah’s new work partner Daniel (Joel Oulette), who shows the teen the ropes and fills her in on the broader history that led them to this point. Why exactly her mother hasn’t undertaken the latter responsibility in the preceding years is a mystery, as is the exact path humanity took from war, famine and ecological disaster to world peace in an arcadian paradise, but Fleming seems unconcerned with making sense of her premise. Her priority is lecturing the viewer through expositional dialogue so smugly didactic it beggars belief.

It’s shot well enough, though often the screen is littered with animated accoutrements that distract from rather than enhance the mise-en-scene. There is a noble attempt by Oh and Jang to do what they can with a dismal script, the younger performer will surely shine in a stronger piece of work, but so rarely do they get the chance to fully inhabit their characters. Meanwhile, Ouelette is given a lot to do with his wordy role and he struggles through a stilted performance.

But even if the film’s script were razor sharp and all its performers at the top of their game, there is something concerning about the film’s outlook that casts an uneasy shadow over proceedings. Optimistic viewers will see Daniel’s creepy utopian optimism and the limp compliance of those going through their EOL ceremonies, and assume this will play out like a low-budget Black Mirror episode. It seems obvious that this eco-fascist practice of population control will be the subject of scathing critique, particularly considering its basis in the overpopulation myth – the belief, rejected by most climate scientists and labelled racist and colonialist by academics, that an excess of humans is causing our climate crisis.

Bafflingly, as time goes on it becomes increasingly clear that Fleming’s ire is directed not at the proponents of this credo, but at us. Kiah’s weak protestations aren’t so much the voice of reason as a vehicle for the admonishment of the film’s audience; in its many overwrought and tautological reams of dialogue, rarely if ever do the characters challenge the ethics of population control, or try to hold power to account. The question is never ‘how can we continue this barbaric practice?’, but rather ‘how could our ancestors force us into this?’, as if unless we change our ways this human cull will become an unfortunate necessity.

In its premise Can I Get A Witness? presents an opportunity to interrogate utopian ideals and the authoritarian impulses that so often prop them up. But that is not what this movie is. Instead we have an almost two-hour sermon defined by a depressing misanthropy that seems more likely to breed resentment than further the environmental cause.

Can I Get A Witness? was screened at TIFF on September 7, 2024. Read our list of films to watch at the 2024 Toronto Film Festival!