Sleeper

At this time of year when looking into the past to see how we've dealt with things and gazing into the future to contemplate the coming events, I've sat down and watched one of the more inventive sci-fi time travel movies from the seventies. Woody Allen's Sleeper shows that even going two hundred years into the future you still end up with the same political, social and personal problems as we have today. Allen plays a perfect free thinking neurotic from the twentieth century to Diane Keaton's sensible futuristic artist drone that believes everything that the government is telling the public.After going into the hospital for ulcer surgery, Miles Monroe wakes up two hundred years in the future to a society that is being run by a military police state. The so-called advancements in technology that are on display in the movie show that in some cases technology just goes to far in making our lives better, the orgasmitron is one example. There is also a scene where the scientists ask Miles to explain what some items are because they have no record of them, and here he adds his own misinterpretation to the explanation and the scientists take it as law. The physical comedy that runs rampant throughout the film is great, it reminds you of the old chase scenes from the silent era of movies.
Hopefully as the future becomes more real every day, the idea that we will be under control by a militaristic police state with a dictator holding the reigns is pure fantasy. But like so many people have said time and again, the future is not written in stone, it can't truly be predicted and we see that as evidence every time we wake up and move forward through our lives. Yet, with a film like this we can imagine that the future can be fantastic and the human spirit, no matter what the circumstances, will triumph over any injustice in the world.