Does Division 19 bring up legitimate concerns for the future?

In creating division 19, director Suzie Halewood was trying to make a point — that we need to be careful how much power we put into the hands of the government.

Division 19 was not your run of the mill movie. It was full of abstract thought. And though my point here is not to review it, I believe a few things about the movie deserve more attention than they have thus far received in the press.

I recently spoke to Suzie Halewood about her movie and was thoroughly impressed with her conceptual thinking and the way she pieced together a film about the dangers of facial recognition and technology run rampant.

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Her biggest concern is that we have stopped questioning the uptick of governmental technology used upon its own citizens due to the frog in boiling water effect: we have subtly, over time, grown used to the technology used on us.

I, myself, have long hoped that someone would take a look at the way things are trending and make a movie about where society could be headed as a result. Division 19 accomplished that.

As cameras and surveillance become more prominent, it will soon get to the point where we are, in essence, always under some sort of watch while going about our daily business. In fact, we are already almost at that point.

Now, was this uptick in surveillance entirely due to governmental mal-intent? No. Post 9/11 we, in the USA, knew things needed to change, but we didn’t know how.

The result of the fear of that aftermath resulted in The Patriot Act, a law that allowed federal agents to wiretap and use methods of information gathering that were inadmissible in a court of law prior to that point.

The citizens were angry at the attacks, and at the government for allowing them, and we got what we wanted — an empowered government; but in giving the government that level of power, we sacrificed an amount of freedom we have yet to fully regain.

Now, has the government likely saved life as a result of that law? Yes. Inarguably. So it is all bad? No way. It’s just that we need to not lose sight of what it has cost us.

We need to realize that. We need to remember it, and that is the point of Division 19.

Division 19 tackles these issues, within its budget, as well as any movie I’ve seen.

Division 19 can now be seen on Amazon Video.