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| World on a Wire | |||
"Never mind how inconceivable it is that busy Rainer Werner Fassbinder took time between his two crowning provocations, The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972) and Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974), to make a three-and-a-half-hour sci-fi sizzler for German TV.… Let’s just be thankful he did. World on a Wire is the discovery of the season … very much a key chapter in Fassbinder’s story — a step toward bigger budgets and slicker production values, yet clarifying of his core artistic legacy." – Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out New York "World on a Wire is undeniably an artifact of its moment. The clothes, the cars and the furniture are richly, even extravagantly, redolent of the Euro-’70s, as is the anxious tremor of political and sexual unease that vibrates (along with a sinister, Muzak-y score) underneath the opulent surface. The film is also and unmistakably the work of its director, one of the most ferociously prolific and restlessly original artists German cinema has ever produced…. World on a Wire, while too slow and diffuse to count as a lost masterpiece, is valuable in expanding our sense of what Fassbinder could do and is also a source of much visual and intellectual pleasure in its own right. The film, made in Paris on a relatively modest budget, uses set design, camera movement and clever editing (rather than elaborate special effects) to create a world of sinister conspiracy and tantalizing sensual possibility. The plot is both intricate and simple. Fred Stiller (Klaus Löwitsch), a scientist at the Institute for Cybernetics and Futurology, begins to suspect that the organization’s most important project, a government-run, corporate-sponsored program called Simulacron, is more complicated and less benign than it seems. People who know too much about it have a way of dying suddenly… and to get to the bottom of it all, Stiller pursues a series of conversations with men in dark suits and women in brightly colored dresses. He also wires himself up to be transported, in a scenario that prefigures both The Matrix and Avatar, to a virtual reality confected of electronic waves. That experience, the core of Simulacron, leads Stiller to believe that what he has previously understood to be his primary reality is also artificial. There is a lot of explaining in World on a Wire, and also quite a bit of philosophical musing…. But the slow pacing provides the viewer a chance to savor Fassbinder’s virtuosity. The acting is uneven… but the emotional payoff at the end is surprisingly fresh and strong. And the sheer audacity with which Fassbinder and his longtime cinematographer, Michael Ballhaus, move the camera, alighting as if by accident on resonant and complex compositions, is nothing short of breathtaking." – AO Scott, New York Times Presented in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut. |
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| Welt am Draht, West Germany 1973 | |||
Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder With: Klaus Löwitsch (Fred Stiller), Barbara Valentin (Gloria Fromm), Mascha Rabben (Eva Vollmer), Karl-Heinz Vosgerau (Herbert Siskins), Wolfgang Schenck (Franz Hahn), Günter Lamprecht (Fritz Walfang), Ulli Lommel (Rupp, journalist), Adian Hooven (Professor Henry Vollmer), Ivan Desny (Guenther Lause), Joachim Hansen (Hans Edelkern), Kurt Raab (Mark Holm), Margit Carstensen (Maya Schmidt-Gentner), Ingrid Caven (Uschi, journalist), Gottfried John (Einstein), Rudolf Lenz (Hartmann), Lieselotte Eder (data typist), Heinz Meier (Von Weinlaub, secretary of state), Peter Chatel (Hirse, secretary of state), Rainer Hauer (Inspector Lehner), Ernst Küsters, Elhedi Ben Salem (bodyguards) 206 mins, DV (4:3) In German, with English subtitles M violence, nudity Wellington Film Society |
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