Canada | 2024 | 110m | English

Imagine if George Orwell wrote 1984 not to warn the reader of the dangers of totalitarianism, but to wag his finger at the audience, as if to say, “You rubes better shape up, or we’ll have no choice but to force you to obey!”

Can I Get a Witness? begins interestingly enough, focusing on the first day of work for a young woman employed by the state in a near-future dystopia where all humans are compelled—consensually or otherwise—to kill themselves at age 50. Working as a “Witness” to these forced euthanasias, the protagonist wrestles with the shock, discomfort, and grief of her role as she documents the final moments of the quinquagenarians whom she and her partner visit at their homes like some kind of statist Angels of Death.

My interest in the mystery of how this nightmare world came to be and how the protagonists would awaken to, and fight back against, the absurdity and evil of the premise behind their work gave way to dumbfounded horror as I realized that the moral position of the film is not to critique the idea of state-enforced mass euthanasia but to float it as a genuine solution to a world affected by climate change. The protagonist ends the story persuaded that it’s all right, everything is all right, the struggle is finished. She had won the victory over herself. She loves Big Brother.

Canada being Canada, as I walked out of the TIFF screening of this film, I overheard someone say something to the effect of, “We might actually have to do this one day.” Sigh. This country really embarrasses me sometimes. I came so close during the post-screening Q&A with the director and actors to speaking up, not to the filmmakers but to the audience in the theatre, to remind them that no, ageist genocide is never a “necessary evil” under any context (nor would it, by the way, grant human beings the magical ability to suddenly be able to control Earth’s weather patterns).

I really think this is one of the most morally reprehensible films I’ve ever seen in my life. And that’s coming from someone who watched Cannibal Holocaust the other day. Treat it as a curiosity; as a look into the mind of ultra-paranoid, anti-human, eco-extremists with a distinctly (and shamefully) Canadian attitude toward euthanasia.

1/5

Viewed on September 6, 2024 at the TIFF Bell Lightbox as part of the Toronto International Film Festival 2024.