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Monday, July 25, 2011
MOVIE REVIEW
World On A Wire (1973) | Welt Am Draht
Tethered
Inside A
Live? Or Memorex? Future
Klaüs Lowitsch as Fred Stiller in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's epic "World On A
Wire".
Rainer
Werner Fassbinder Foundation
by
Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com
FOLLOW
Monday,
July 25, 2011
"World
On A Wire" (Welt Am Draht), Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 1973 classic sci-fi
adventure in existentialism and perception, gets a high-definition rebirth in
its brief re-appearance in U.S. theaters after a quick exhibition last year.
This futuristic tale, shot so marvelously by Michael Ballhaus, remains glossy
techno-cinema. Ice blue hues and oversaturated colors dominate.
An IKZ executive at technology corporation Cybernetics has an extreme headache.
He sees a bleak future, one so terrible for the world that he can't utter a word
about it before dropping dead. Another man disappears into thin air.
What is behind all of this? Piercing sounds punctuate the film, ringing in
our ears and in the mind of Fred Stiller (a terrific Klaüs
Lowitsch),
a Cybernetics employee. The company has devised a powerful super computer
named Simulacron. Meanwhile, Fred investigates the mysterious
disappearances but something is happening to him in the process. Those
loud, piercing noises get louder. Fred is figuratively paralyzed by
blinding headaches. He's accused of murder. He becomes a fugitive.
Fred has to uncover the truth about Cybernetics and Simulacron before the end
catches up with him. What's real and what's not?
For the time in which it was made, Mr. Fassbinder's film anticipates the future
well. Funny, in some ways even outlandish now, "World On A Wire" is always
aware of its self-parody and the stage it occupies as a pop-art picture.
The film, however, is entirely serious about its visions and heart. "World
On A Wire" is less a drama than a comedic meditation of madness and fear of new
species that threatens to make humans, or at least humans-as-we-know-them,
extinct. The film doesn't necessarily comment on computers and the
electronic future in an especially substantive way; the fact that the world
might be headed there is its pure, singular horror.
"World On A Wire" is also a cinematic study of human transition.
Juxtapositions of humans and mannequins represent evolvement of human species,
but how much of an evolvement given the director's near-catatonic human figures?
Further evolution is glimpsed in a shot of Fred and his wife as they lie in bed
on leopard-skin pillows. Their blankets are made of animal pelts.
They try to cling to those prehistoric origins but technology and its onslaught
represent a faster transition than they -- specifically Fred Stiller -- wants or
is ready for. Fred is fearful, paranoid, confused, and wants so
desperately to stay in touch with his own humanity. Is he live, Memorex or
just plain "Cuckoo's Nest" crazy? And whose world is he living in if not
his own?
Mr. Fassbinder's trademark views through the prism of glass -- his cameras make
love to it as much as the characters do -- gives full, rich perspective to
precise shot-making. Choreographed with excessive discipline, characters
stay frozen in place until other characters change position or are disrupted by
noise, simulating a robotic world that has begun to infect human discourse.
The film's transgressions are subtle and obvious: the humans of the real world
and the humans of the computer age are neither phenotypically nor discerningly
distinct from each other. There's a constant disembodiment of the human
image, fragmented in glass, mirrors and windows.
A scene in
"World" that's just one example of
Fassbinder's love of glass and distortion.
Rainer
Werner Fassbinder Foundation
The players on this cool and muted canvas love the decor they play in.
They
are
the decor. The characters even play with the film's decor in their
dialogue. Mannequin-like, characters pose and model like Dietrich amidst
an artsy, robotic camp atmosphere full of music and odd noises. The odd,
technical sounds evoke sound checks. The film feels like Leone's spaghetti
westerns. Watching "World On A Wire" is like watching a photo shoot come
to life and evolve. It's truly a moving picture of static figures.
Sudden jump cuts and zooms on faces supply comedy not necessarily the urgency of
a character's realizations.
Mr. Fassbinder's film is remarkably procedural but its strength is in the
mystery of its evaporating characters and its blurring of real and
technological. It is science-fiction investigation wrapped in coded
motions. The corporate presence is not necessarily welcomed here, a theme
that plays ironically today given Apple and its largely celebrated impact on the
world's technology (iPad, iPhone) and computers.
Almost everything is objectified in "World". Cars. Women. Men.
Objectified. "World" self-parodies its interactivity with objects and
decor with zeal and unmistakable fetish. Cars gleam and shine. A
cigarette lighter is the object of spontaneous doom, and with its dry satire the
film explodes some of its own comic symbolism, simultaneously mocking and
exaggerating it. "World" objectifies its objects and its technology,
adding androgyny and homoeroticism as a punctuation of the story and the
characters' fascination and confusion about an ever-changing, ever-modernizing
world.
The film is arresting, deliberate and sharp, its styling ornate and extravagant.
"World On A Wire" gives a whiff of an ode to "2001: A Space Odyssey", with an
homage to HAL 9000, and there's a piece of music ("The Blue Danube") heard
faintly during one scene when characters discuss Simulacron 1, the perspicacious
computer that manufactures artificial intelligence. "World On A Wire"
accurately foretells and symbolizes the advent of a future hooked on phonics and
electronics, of human beings merged or virtually in-sync with technology.
Mr. Fassbinder mocks the horror of this future and his characters' reaction to
it. The film's synthetic surface only enhances the parody of its oncoming,
unavoidable techno age.
More glass
distortion and disembodiment in Mr.
Fassbinder's epic "World On A Wire".
Rainer
Werner Fassbinder Foundation
"World On A Wire" looks like a sweet, romantic view of the end of human beings
as humans and their birth as automatons, slaves to mechanical rhythms and
Kraftwerk-style electric-boogie. The film doesn't feel as dated as does
stark, brittle and enveloped in melancholy. Unknowing characters preside
over a transition that has already overtaken them. Some realize it.
Others do not.
Mr. Fassbinder's film has influenced many over the last 40 years, including "The
Matrix" and
"Source Code". "World On A Wire", with its flourishes of Philip
K. Dick, exudes elegance and 1950s-love story romanticism while moored in its
1970s checkered suits and bright-colored fashions. Made for German
television, "World On A Wire" runs almost four hours long but is a mesmerizing
trip into mind-shifting, memory-challenged perception and madness, and through
visions or hallucinations of a sparse, limiting future. The film remains
inventive and ambitious even though its scope, due to its television trappings,
remains intimate.
"World On A Wire" has remained largely unseen inside the U.S. for many years,
and after a brief theatrical run Stateside last year has re-emerged in 2011 at
film festivals (including
San Francisco's 54th edition in April) and now
is in renewed theatrical release. The film is making its way around the
country. If "World On A Wire" is playing in your city, make a date to
spare four hours (including intermission) at your local theater or drive or
train-ride to another to see it. Mr. Fassbinder's fine, transfixing epic
deserves maximum exposure on the largest possible screen. I loved the
world that this film lives in and I marveled at its trance-like states of
observance and illusion.
"World On A Wire" is priceless cinema, almost 40 years later.
With:
Barbara Valentin, Macha Rabben,
Karl-Heinz Vosgerau, Wolfgang Schenck, Günter
Lamprecht, Ulli Lommel, Adrian Hooven, Ivan Desny, Joachim Hansen, Kurt Raab,
Margit Carstensen, Ingrid Caven, John Gottfried, Rudolf Lenz, Lieselott Eder,
Elhedi Ben Salem, Solange Pradel, Maryse Dellannoy, Elma Karlowa, Bruce Low,
Magdalena Montezums, Christiane Maybach, Eddie Constantine, Peter Moland, Doris
Mattes.
Review also
here (San Francisco Indie Movie Examiner), with
five photos
"World On A Wire" (Welt Am Draht) is not rated by the Motion Picture Association Of
America but contains violence, sensuality, some nudity and an image or two some
viewers may find disturbing. The film is in the German language with
English subtitles. The film's running time is three hours and 25
minutes (excluding intermission.)
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