3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Paradise

2023, Boris Kunz (Drei Stunden) -- Netflix

Youth is wasted on the young. In my personal experience, as in me, that is entirely true. I wasted my youth in vast swathes. TBH I still am wasting my life. And I am past the point of return value. But whatever. But what if you could regain that youth? As in physically be younger, but with all the wisdom (???) of your current age. Like all good scifi cautionary tales, this youth only comes at the cost... of another's youth. Tit for tat. You get younger, they get older.

The world of Paradise is of the twenty minutes into the future ilk, where the rich are richer and reap all the benefits. There are unexplained massive refugee camps everywhere all over Europe, much of eastern Europe left the union and lives in squalor. But for a small exchange, like 10, 20... 40 years of your life, a company called AEON will give you a life (what's remaining of it) of leisure and wealth. And your years are given to someone who can afford it. Oh they say it is meant to benefit the scientists and artists and the people who are making the world better, but we all know better. 

Max (Kostja Ullman, The Reckoning) is Top Seller at AEON, a man who coerces teenage refugees out of decades, a man about to be rewarded, able to upgrade his apartment, start a family. But then their apartment burns down, and he finds out his young wife Elena (Marlene Tanczik, Never Look Away) has used her years as collateral. Debt enforcement is immediate -- 40 years. Max is desperate to get his wife's, their, life back, even if she doesn't want it. And when he finds out the founder of AEON was directly involved in his apartment fire and his wife's debt, he has to ask himself who is worth more.

The movie could have continued to explore the moral complications, but instead it decided to devolve into an actioner, putting Max and Elena between the forces of AEON and Adam, the terrorist group that wants to end this technology forever and kills anyone who benefits from it. Oh, it tries to weave in some difficult choices but those get lost in the gunfire. In the end, nobody wins but AEON the corporation, which is a lazy way to end most dystopian fiction, assuming Nothing Ever Changes and nobody wins. Except the rich.