Change Your Image
squealingbernierubber
Reviews
Welt am Draht (1973)
Easily the best "virtual reality" film out there.
I watched this in one sitting, despite the duration of 3h20min. In fact, I found the film so gripping that I didn't even notice the length.
The idea of "virtual reality" has been explored in print science fiction since Stanislaw Lem wrote a short story on the concept in the 1950s (which was later included in the collection "Cyberiada".). Since then, the concept was common currency in writing.
For some reason, film lagged behind. That is, until 1973, when R.W. Fassbinder made this as a 2-part miniseries for television.
And did he make it well! I saw this film after watching every other cinematic exploration of the concept, and nobody else even came close to considering the philosophical concepts associated with virtual reality(realities?).
The state of cybernetics in the 1970s is accurately depicted, with a computer occupying an entire room and being serviced by an army of operators, and programmers occupying a mystical, godlike position above them.
The general look and mindset of the 1970s is captured accurately, which may make the film seem anachronistic to younger viewers.
There is action, but not the blockbuster-style non stop stuff which has become de rigeur in the present-day cinema. This is more a film of ideas.
The building of tension to a peak is performed masterfully, and the ending will astonish you. You will spend quite a time thinking hard after watching this.
One problem: the English subtitles are crudely done and inaccurate. I found that I could render the translation more accurately while watching. This sort of thing is distracting and irritating, and makes the film(especially the finer points) difficult to understand for those who don't understand German.
This film deserves wider distribution, both as cinema and on television. Keeping such a masterpiece locked away, as ARD did, is a disgrace.
Avalon (2001)
A film that deserves to be called "cyberpunk"
This title was not heavily promoted in the English-speaking world, which I find a curious omission, as I am sure that it would have attracted attention. I knew nothing about the film until seeing it being sold very cheaply by the local public library (They had no use for a DVD in German).
The addictive nature of the game referred to in the title is underscored by showing players using VR sets in a squalid den resembling a heroin "shooting gallery" and going through the motions of life with the sole purpose of returning to the game.
Eventually the heroine manages to find a level of the game which is better than real life. She is, however, cognizant of the fact that in reality she is very likely to be a brain-dead hospital case, depending on the care and charity of others to keep her alive.
Should she just play on on the new level, considering that to be her "reality", as another character advises, should she try to reach the ultimate level, or should she deliberately lose? This is the moral problem which she has to solve.
A minor problem with the film is the rather purposeless prolongation of the scenes of grinding debasement at the expense of the time spent in the "new" level. This can cause the plot to become somewhat boring in the middle of the film.
If you can find this film dubbed into or subtitled in a language you understand, my advice is to watch it. If you're interested in cyberpunk, this is the real thing!
Stalker (1979)
Weak, meandering religiosity - with some redeeming features.
Let me start by telling the reader that regardless of what you might have been told, this film is neither cyberpunk or dystopian(unless you consider the USSR in the 70s a dystopia in its own right).
I have heard that the film is based on the Strugatski brothers' story "roadside picnic". I can offer no opinion on this piece of literature as I have not been able to get hold of a copy, except to say that the work of theirs which I have read is all solid, consistent SF. The Strugatskis also wrote the screenplay for this, which surprised me.
As this film was banned in my country(Reason being 'glorification of communism', which is a joke), and seems not to have ever been released after the unbanning, I watched it on the Internet. I am sorry I blew a lot of data on a film of such low merit.
First, the film is inordinately long-winded for the story it has to tell. Certain narrations and self-indulgent bits of cinematography could have been cut without harming the look of the film and tightening the storyline considerably.
The conceit of shooting urban sequences in monochrome and the parts happening in the "zone" in colour is utterly pointless and adds little but confusion.
Shortly, the story concerns three people.
Introduced first is "the stalker", a tolkach(Soviet Russia: person who does illegal or borderline illegal free market transactions for which there is a demand). This gentleman's speciality is escorting people into the aforementioned "zone", within which a room is found which has the power of granting the deepest desires of those who enter(according to rumour, which the stalker obviously does nothing to dispel).
Said stalker lives with his wife and daughter in an extremely dilapidated set of rooms which is open to the elements and situated next to the railway, whose trains shake it about. Later we hear that he has no real work and has been in prison several times for penetrating the "zone", and that his child is malformed due to the zone's action.
His two customers, the "writer" and "professor" arrive. The writer is an alcoholic and the professor an academic nonentity.
After much palaver the three set off into the zone. evading the police barricade. Apparently the zone has aspects of intelligence, killing people who disturb it excessively. The "correct" route to the room also keeps changing.
The trip through the zone is the weakest part of the film. Although the two customers keep messing around, nothing happens to them and the "professor" even manages to find a short cut by ignoring orders.
The "writer" and "professor"(who detest each other) indulge in endless disquisitions on the purpose and nature of life, with the stalker joining in on the pseudophilosophical talk by perpetually alluding to religious themes, quoting the Bible, and minutely discussing the fate of another stalker called Porcupine, who got rich by using the room and later hanged himself.
A ridiculous scene before the three discuss entering the room shows the professor calling his boss and insulting him, and the writer turning on the lights, showing the long-abandoned zone to have power and telephones working, which is almost impossible.
The professor decided to blow up the room because it will attract dangerous types of people. Eventually he changes his mind and dismantles his A-bomb. The writer has decided that the deepest desires of people are debased and refuses to enter (The case of Porcupine is used as an example). Both insult the stalker, saying that he is addicted to playing God and uses the Zone and his clients for the purpose.
Although the religious talk may have been very transgressive in 1979 Moscow, it is dated and boring now. ( A film about the rise and fall of Porcupine would have been more interesting.) This film preaches at you, it does not show you, and that is its failing.
Positive points are the accurate depiction of a Pripyat-like area six years before Chernobyl, and for showing the living conditions of the most benighted class of people in the USSR(former prisoners).
Recommended for fans of religious cinematography and the Turkish dross propaganda film "Kod Adi KOZ", which it is far better than.