f On desire, failure and fear: Utopia and dystopia in contemporary cinema

This article discusses different concepts of utopia and dystopia and their diverse fates in contemporary film, analysing their typical representations, popular themes and tropes. It argues that in the new cinema, utopia has practically disappeared, preserved in works nostalgically or ironically commenting on its demise, its place being appropriated by dystopias that tend to dominate the cultural imagination and that gradually evolve from politically driven narratives towards dystopian adventure movies. Referring briefly to The Mission (Joffé, 1986) and The Beach (Boyle, 2000), it shows the withdrawal of utopias from contemporary cinema and their residual presence in nostalgic or ironic returns, while the evolution of dystopias is illustrated with the presentation of The Hunger Games (Ross, 2012) and Elysium (Blomkamp, 2013). The dual shift, then, first from utopia to dystopia, and then from hard-boiled politics towards individual subjectivity and entertainment marks one of the most characteristic tendencies observable in contemporary dystopian cinema. Its increasingly individualist orientation and the character-driven rather than political focus lead in turn back to the reconsideration of the meaning, value and future of the very concepts of utopia and dystopia in contemporary culture and film.