The Pod Generation

Artificial wombs have been discussed for over a century as the ultimate means by which to end inequality between the sexes, to remove the medical risks and sociopolitical obligations associated with pregnancy, and to make biological parenthood an option for anyone, without the need for access to a particular type of body. That potential has not changed across the decades, but the societal context related to it has. Sophie Barthes’ film re-examines the idea in the context of a world in which natural behaviours are increasingly being commodified, in which the experience of being human is distanced from the natural world step by step, so smoothly that most people barely notice it.

Accompanying us on this journey is a young couple, Rachel and Alvy, played by two of the sharpest and most sensitive actors in the business, Emilia Clarke and Chiwetel Ejiofor. There’s a ten-year age gap between them but they have sufficient chemistry to convince, even with the flattened affect which the film initially demands of them, and although this is the near future, nobody treats this as unusual, though there are eyebrows raised at the fact that Rachel is the main wage earner. This is one of several ways in which the film, set in the near future, is curiously old fashioned. The abundance of greys, taupes and similar neutral tones makes the locations look like show homes circa 2018, and, bizarrely, NFTs are still a thing.

Barthes doesn’t seem wholly unaware of this. Rachel’s AI therapist is named Eliza and speaks almost entirely in dialogue from the original chatbot created by Joseph Weizenbaum in 1964. Alvy is cynical about using such facilities. Whilst Rachel goes into her nature pod to dream of sitting in a verdant garden or watching the sea, he dabbles in a little ASMR for relaxation but otherwise prefers to get hands-on with precisely the sort of phenomena others shun. In one uncomfortable scene he tries to persuade one of his botany students to eat a fig he has just plucked. “It’s from a tree,” says one of them, explaining his aversion. More than one person suggests to Alvy that, for budgetary or hygiene reasons, he should replace his plants with holograms.

In light of this, viewers won’t be surprised to discover that he is hesitant about the idea of having a baby gestated in a pod. Anticipating this, Rachel hesitates to tell him until she’s already made the down payment, which of course makes matters worse. This isn’t a film which is interested in creating sensation by showing us rows, however. They love each other and try to figure things out, and it’s this process, and the increased openness to change which both of them experience because of it, which enables the film to become more than just a satire on corporatism and society’s relationship with technology. Balancing that is a tender drama about very natural parental anxieties and efforts to adjust, sexual disappointment and emotional discovery.

There are some lovely little touches here. The cat carrier which resembles the pod. Rachel’s dreams of giving birth to hard boiled eggs. The couple kicking back with a Werner Herzog documentary and getting tearful over the fate of a penguin. Alvy tries to maintain a strictly rational approach; Rachel is more mystical in hers; neither holds up very well. Life is messy and awkward and perhaps that’s the point. It doesn’t fit easily into the life plans and corporate schedules which ‘productive’ members of society are expected to adhere to.

Like most planned pregnancies, the film tests viewers’ patience a little, taking its time to deliver. It builds up its world well and then doesn’t do a lot with it, but perhaps that’s part of the point too. Even the acts of rebellion which we eventually witness seem unlikely to change much in the long term. Pod babies stat being taught how to think before they’re born. A corporate-run school system is wholly focused on engagement with AI. This might be a facsimile of life but there will be, Rachel is assured, no surprises.