daily stream: will movie FX lead the way to a dystopian future?
2014’s *The Congress* is streaming on multiple services on both sides of the Atlantic
Performance capture and de-aging have quickly become standard ways to alter the appearance of actors onscreen… and now AI is set to transform the technology again with “high-resolution photorealistic faceswaps and de-ageing effects on top of actors’ performances live and in real time without the need for further compositing or VFX work.” Could this have an impact similar to what we see in the 2014 film The Congress? Here, Robin Wright plays a version of herself, an actress who allows herself to be digitally scanned so that a forever-young electronic puppet “Robin Wright” can appear in movies forever… or at least for the next 20 years, the projected lifespan of the technology. And then the film jumps to 20 years later… The sci-fi extrapolation here is hugely ambitious, reminiscent of The Matrix and the works of Terry Gilliam, and also disturbingly apocalyptic. Have we been warned?
US: stream on Hulu; rent/buy on Prime and Apple TV
UK: stream on StudioCanal Presents (via Prime); rent/buy on Prime and Apple TV; rent on BFI Player
See The Congress at Letterboxd for more viewing options.
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Love this movie.