the casual critic

#fiction #films #SF #solarpunk

Hope is hard in a world ravaged by ecological breakdown, especially for the young. Ten year old Iris struggles to have hope. Hers is a world of natural disasters, inexorably sliding further and further towards climate catastrophe, all while the adults in the room act as if everything is normal. The year is 2075, and all is not well.

That is, until Arco literally crashes into her life. Titular Arco is another ten-year-old, but whereas Iris is from our near future, Arco hails from a distant future where humans have relocated to gigantic cloud arcologies and mastered time travel. Even in that future though, children are not supposed to play with time until they’ve passed time-travellers exam. Impatient Arco steals his his sister’s device, only to lose control and end up in Iris’ time by accident. In the tradition of all good children’s movies, our two youngsters embark on a series of capers and adventures, supported by the friends they make along the way, to get Arco back to his own time.

Arco is a beautifully drawn animation, evoking the traditions of Studio Ghibli both in terms of style and narrative. It is a story of perseverance and hope against the odds, its generally light-hearted tone giving its emotional moments all the more impact. Like all good science fiction, it is a story not of, but for our times, reminding us that hope is a radical act.

Arco breaks with conventional time travel script by having its time traveller arrive not in the present day, but the future. In doing so it creates a double contrast: between Iris’ time and our own, and Arco’s time and Iris’. Set in the near future, Iris’ time is a plausibly familiar continuation of our own. It is the world of overshoot, of simultaneous technological progress and ecological degradation. This combination affords a precarious balance, symbolised by the protective domes that shield buildings from successive natural disasters, though Iris’ hopelessness suggests that the overall trend is downwards. Inverting the description of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossesed, Arco might be called a ‘realistic dystopia’. This is not a world ravaged by Mad Max or 2012 style cataclysms, but a society adapted to climate change yet possibly losing that struggle in the long run. It is a more believable and hence more relatable depiction of what the future might hold for us.

For Arco though, Iris’ time is as alien as ours. Not only is he astounded that humans live on the ground and cannot communicate with birds, but much of 21st century technology is bizarre to him. Interestingly, this includes the omnipresent robots that perform so much of necessary labour in Iris’ time, suggesting that humanity at some point divested itself of AI and robotics. The evident contrast between Arco and Iris’ experiences creates a profound sense of discontinuity. Iris’ world still feels connected to our own, but Arco’s cannot be understood as a simple linear extrapolation of current trends. Through this disconnect between its two futures, Arco subtly argues that human survival through harmonious coexistence with nature will require a rupture with our present social and technological trajectory.

A second unusual aspect of Arco is the absence of direct antagonism. While Iris and Arco face multiple threats in their quest to return Arco to his time, none of these are enemies. Interpersonal conflict arises from misunderstanding or miscommunication and is therefore open to resolution through dialogue. Yet the greatest threats are impersonal, with our heroes having to face storms and wildfires. The calamitous unpredictability of the natural environment is deeply symbolic of the imbalance it has been pushed into by decades of human (in)action.

This is not to say that nature is portrayed exclusively as a threat. Interspersed between storms and wildfires are moments of tranquillity where the nature is depicted with reverent care, and our heroes traverse biomes rendered in lush, tender and exquisite detail. Even when quiescent, nature is not merely the background on which Arco plays out, but is integral to it, and shows us the complex, verdant and sometimes alien beauty we stand to lose. This is another way in which Arco is reminiscent of Studio Ghibli movies such as Spirited Away, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, or Princess Mononoke, with which it also shares its strong, young female character and its endearing, slightly dreamlike childhood logic. Our heroes face their challenges head on with a heedlessness that would make adults flinch, and while Arco ultimately remains on the safe terrain of a children’s movie, there are stakes and consequences, though they are more likely to affect the adults in the audience.

Aesthetically and narratively, Arco is riding the wave of increased interest in solarpunk, with its focus on harmony with nature and gentler, more caring technologies. Yet while the overall message is one of hope, there is an undercurrent of pessimism in Arco. It reminded me of Terra Nil, where humans have been removed from the scene altogether. Arco is not as drastic, but its solution to the degradation of the Earth’s biosphere is for humans to relocate away from the surface, implying that that actual harmony is (not yet) possible and that vacating large swathes of the Earth is the only viable option.

Regardless, Arco’s overall message is one of hope, and it is not coincidental that Arco’s restoration to his family is brought about through an act of kindness rather than ingenuity. By restoring Arco to his future, Iris regains her belief that there is a future, and that it can be better. It is that belief that, as we learn in the credits, will motivate her to make her own contributions to restore humanity to a place of balance within the web of life.

We don’t have the benefit of the future manifest to give us the hope and courage to struggle forward. But neither are we the first generation to face the dark clouds gathering on the horizon. As Antonio Gramsci famously wrote from his prison in the fascist Italy of 1929, times of adversity require us to confront them with pessimism of the intellect, but optimism of the will. Hope is the catalyst that helps us act in the absence of certainty. We can never know if our actions will bring forth the future we desire, but it is certain that if we don’t act, it will never come to pass.

Notes & suggestions

• Of course, we don’t have to look to the future to see the catastrophic impacts of climate change. For many outside the sheltered Global North, they are already here, and have been here for some time.
• Hope may be a necessary condition, but it is not sufficient, and it needs to be tethered to clear analysis and radical action. Simply ‘being hopeful at things’ is not going to be sufficient. For a critical appraisal of ‘hopepunk’ as a political project, see here.
• The use of robots is incidental in Arco, but it was nonetheless pleasant to have a movie that didn’t agonise over the ability of humans and robots to coexist with mutual respect. In that it reminded me of Pluto.
• The intractable problems of our age (ecosystem collapse, poverty, emerging fascism, racism and the legacy of colonialism, etc.) are not as easily solved alone as, surprisingly, sending a boy back to his own time. Taking action is easier together, for example through a trade union, tenants union, political party, or campaign group. If you are in work and not in a union, join or start one. See if there are local campaign or activist groups organising in your area. And if you’re not sure what to do, be like Iris: find a problem and take the initiative to solve it.
• For a starting point to engage with the solarpunk aesthetic movement, check out the Story Seed Library for copyleft artwork and story ideas.

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