2027: Finding Eros

What is a world without love? It’s no world at all, at least not a world worth living in. Love is the closest thing to real magic that exists on earth, and yet it is so often dismissed or taken for granted. Often people do not think twice about having love in their life and flowing around the world, it is one of the things held in common universally. Yet a world without love is the world presented in ‘2027: Finding Eros’, Saurabh Arora’s film, which presents a dystopian future that feels refreshing despite its numerous recycled elements.

We’re introduced to the scenario with imposing title cards and a slew of exposition that perhaps doesn’t quite stay on screen long enough to truly have its effects felt. Nevertheless, it presents a pretty bleak future, with one quarter of the world’s population wiped out by war and disease by 2027, presumably leading to further overcrowding of the world’s biggest cities - i.e. London, Beijing, and Mumbai. The consequences of such catastrophic events - one cannot imagine the scale of war and disease that Arora projects to occur over the next four years in order to wipe out over two billion people - have been long and far reaching. However, perhaps one of the most interesting, and no doubt significant, changes has been that people have lost the ability to love, whether that be as a result of collective depression, or a universal fear that to love is to lose, or possibly even some consequence of the catastrophic plague that affected the globe. The reason for this remains loss of love remains unclear.

Eros was the Greek God of love and sexual desire, and hence a fitting name for both the title of the film, and the drug taken in this dystopian future to help people love. In a loveless world this artificially induced kind of love has unsurprisingly taken people by storm and the great mass of the world’s population is hooked, including the film’s protagonist Dan (Ali Bana), who rides around the streets of Mumbai on his Royal Enfield desperately trying to pick up a package of Eros so that he can feel love for his partner, who craves intimacy and love, once again. Dan is an interesting and complex character, just as taken to staring into the distance as he blows on his cigarette forlornly, as he is to calling his dealers with a misplaced kind of control. He retains a sort of intimidating composure throughout, not too dissimilar to Ryan Gosling’s iconic Driver in ‘Drive’, and Bana plays the part with a brooding poise throughout.

Saurabh Arora’s directing is strong throughout, from the extreme close ups of Dan as he rides his motorbike, to the long shots with Dan framed centrally and solemnly. These shots in particular help to establish Dan’s forlornness, as he takes a drag of a cigarette, or looks out to sea, in flashbacks which remain rightfully ambiguous throughout. Though Arora perhaps leans to heavily on the model set out by ‘Children of Men’ through the screenplay and idea, it is nevertheless a well written piece of cinema, with a slight screenplay further echoing the bleakness of these future times.

‘2027: Finding Eros’ is a fine addition to the landscape of dystopian cinema, with the extremely near future in this case once again placed in jeopardy by mankind, and once again full of lonely people in a bleak world. Yet despite carrying tropes over, ‘2027: Finding Eros’ remains a thoughtful piece of filmmaking, one which truly realises the power of love, and the consequences of its absence.