The Human Surge (2017) - Eduardo Williams

​Brazen and enigmatic, Eduardo William's The Human Surge is a film that brings a pensive yet observational eye to the state of the world as we know it, a film that shows no interest in plot, only story and themes, as it attempts to deconstruct the ever changing landscape of our globalized world. Spanning three continents, going from South America to Africa to Asia, The Human Surge examines three sets of young individuals, each sharing a similar form of detachment to how they feel about their place in the world. Adrift and routinely only finding any form of solace with others their age, The Human Surge showcases how this idea of working to satisfy oneself creates a void of emptiness within, as each of these individuals pine for some form of substance outside the monetary system we inhabit. Impressionistic and moody, The Human Surge examines how technology connectivity is a red herring in a lot of ways, blinding the individual to true connectivity and intimacy. All these characters are individuals who are often seen on their phones or the internet, yet they lack any semblance of true happiness, drained by a material system that promises everything except what it means to be human. The use of setting, notably nature-based landscapes, illustrates this globalized convergence of the old with the new world, as filmmaker Eduardo William's seems to be pleading for us as individuals to not lose what makes us human. While The Human Surge is powerful and transfixing, it's short sighted in it's hostility towards work and materialism, as the filmmakers never touch on the positives of such technological progress, focusing solely on the negatives, and detachment it can cause. The film doesn't give a fair shake to the world of possibilities technological progress can provide to those, with the film's only example of this being a sequence which shows teenagers selling their sexuality over the camera of their computer, a quite narrow-minded and pointed way of manipulating the positives of technological connection by showings sexual exploitation. The film ignores the positives such connection can bring, while also fundamentally lacking an understanding of how work itself is one of the noble endeavors, in that it forces the individual to provide for others, not allowing them to simply pine about this and self-absorbed cognitations. Impressionistic, thought provoking, and well designed, Eduardo William's The Human Surge attempts to deconstruct the globilazation of our world, with mixed yet always fascinating results.

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