World on a WireHow is reality defined? Simple--by how other people define it for you. The philosopher Plato posited the "Allegory of the Cave", which tells of people who have understood the world only through the shadows flickering upon the wall of a cave by the light of a fire, and these shadows are what these people perceive as reality. But at some point, one of these people steps out of the cave and sees reality for what it really is. Upon telling the people of the cave, none of them believe him--considering him crazy or a dreamer--and deny the possibility of anything that challenges their reality. Philosophy, or science fiction? Maybe both; but the big question is "who controls the fire"?
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World on a Wire is fundamentally a science fiction movie, but it banks heavily toward the philosophical horizon. Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, the film shares much in terms of the kind of existential questions of identity and reality, as well as the pervading sense of conspiracy and paranoia-inducing feelings of helplessness in the face of powers beyond comprehension, reminiscent of the works of writer Philip K. Dick. World on a Wire is the story of a scientist and computer programmer named Dr. Fred Stiller (Klaus Löwitsch), who is called in to replace Professor Henry Vollmer (Adrian Hoven), recently deceased under mysterious circumstances, and to oversee the sophisticated computer simulation of reality called "Simulacron 1". Simulacron is designed to predict trends in humanity some twenty years in the future, by creating an artificial reality, a microcosm where the inhabitants are virtually sentient and are so realistically crafted that they have apparent sentience. It is a masterpiece of technical engineering, one which the project lead, Herbert Siskins (Karl-Heinz Vosgerau) wishes to exploit for monetary gain, to the point where he is willing to set spies like his secretary, the voluptuous Gloria Fromm (Barbara Valentin), to watch over Stiller and keep an eye on the newly-minted director of Simulacron. Just prior to his appointment, his and Vollmer's mutual friend, Günther Lause (Ivan Desny), meets Stiller at Siskins' bizarrely formal pool party, and tries to tell him what it was that Vollmer revealed to him prior to his untimely demise, only to vanish into thin air. As if this were not strange enough, a short time later--even after reporting this to the police--Lause's disappearance takes on a whole new level when the very memory of his existence seems to be wiped out entirely from the minds of those who knew him. The scientist in Stiller is unable to reconcile the anachronism and this becomes the first major motivation for him to suspect that all at the Institute for Cybernetics and Future Science ("IKZ" in German) is not what it appears to be...or the world as a whole, for that matter.
World on a Wire predates the likes of movies like The Matrix by roughly a quarter of a century, but the concept of a world within a world is not an unfamiliar one. It is a story which has always entertained science fiction writers with a philosophical bent of mind. Stiller appears to be a hot-headed scientist, but one who still reaches logical conclusions as he picks apart the lies as they pile up. But more interesting are the unusual characteristics and behaviors of him and his fellow characters in World on a Wire. Ostensibly set in some kind of futuristic setting (to a degree), the characters in Stiller's world all seem to have unusual quirks of character that should rightly make audiences alert to the potential artifice of it all. Women in this world always seem to be watching, staring even at men, and many of whom wear some outlandish fashion choices. The only drink which people seem to drink is whiskey, and no one seems to bat an eye--including Stiller--when a random woman on the street is crushed by a load of cinder blocks. Even prior to Stiller's conspiratorial suspicions of doubt about his own reality, the audience of World on a Wire should have plenty of their own, a conditioning which makes us more sympathetic to Stiller's reactions when he is told of Vollmer's terrible secret. The title of the film--World on a Wire--refers to a kind of artificial reality crafted in an electronic circus, not unlike Simulacron. It is a terrifying thought to think of someone controlling your actions by remote proxy, but that is just what the Simulacron program allows people to do; more terrifying is the prospect of discovering that you do not have agency over your own self, or that you are a fabrication of your environment. In Simulacron, Stiller and his colleagues have a contact point in a program named "Einstein" (Gottfried John), who informs Stiller that a rogue program named "Christopher Nobody" tried to kill himself, a behavior which ironically prompts Stiller and his fellow programmer, Fritz Walfang (Günter Lamprecht), to delete Nobody. It is further ironic in that the same kind of action mirrors what seems to have happened to Lause, connecting the dots in Stiller's mind that his world is a fabrication as well. Is Stiller crazy like Vollmer appeared to be at the onset of the film? Or is he acutely aware of something beyond the realm of understanding, enlightened as to the nature of the "real world"? Numerous visual cues hint at more than one existence, and the presence of worlds within worlds. There is a predominance of mirrored surfaces reflecting characters, and even his friend and psychological counselor for IKZ, Franz Hahn (Wolfgang Schenck), keeps numerous fish tanks in his apartment, themselves microcosms for observing the behavior of an isolated collective. World on a Wire asks big questions about how we define our reality, and how it defines us, and who it is that really pulls the strings on all us marionettes.
Recommended for: Fans of a psychologically thrilling science fiction film which plays out like a pulpy philosophical, science fiction novel on the screen. It is a clever and engaging tale and also ahead of its time in predicting the nature of virtual reality in conjunction with defining the self.
World on a Wire predates the likes of movies like The Matrix by roughly a quarter of a century, but the concept of a world within a world is not an unfamiliar one. It is a story which has always entertained science fiction writers with a philosophical bent of mind. Stiller appears to be a hot-headed scientist, but one who still reaches logical conclusions as he picks apart the lies as they pile up. But more interesting are the unusual characteristics and behaviors of him and his fellow characters in World on a Wire. Ostensibly set in some kind of futuristic setting (to a degree), the characters in Stiller's world all seem to have unusual quirks of character that should rightly make audiences alert to the potential artifice of it all. Women in this world always seem to be watching, staring even at men, and many of whom wear some outlandish fashion choices. The only drink which people seem to drink is whiskey, and no one seems to bat an eye--including Stiller--when a random woman on the street is crushed by a load of cinder blocks. Even prior to Stiller's conspiratorial suspicions of doubt about his own reality, the audience of World on a Wire should have plenty of their own, a conditioning which makes us more sympathetic to Stiller's reactions when he is told of Vollmer's terrible secret. The title of the film--World on a Wire--refers to a kind of artificial reality crafted in an electronic circus, not unlike Simulacron. It is a terrifying thought to think of someone controlling your actions by remote proxy, but that is just what the Simulacron program allows people to do; more terrifying is the prospect of discovering that you do not have agency over your own self, or that you are a fabrication of your environment. In Simulacron, Stiller and his colleagues have a contact point in a program named "Einstein" (Gottfried John), who informs Stiller that a rogue program named "Christopher Nobody" tried to kill himself, a behavior which ironically prompts Stiller and his fellow programmer, Fritz Walfang (Günter Lamprecht), to delete Nobody. It is further ironic in that the same kind of action mirrors what seems to have happened to Lause, connecting the dots in Stiller's mind that his world is a fabrication as well. Is Stiller crazy like Vollmer appeared to be at the onset of the film? Or is he acutely aware of something beyond the realm of understanding, enlightened as to the nature of the "real world"? Numerous visual cues hint at more than one existence, and the presence of worlds within worlds. There is a predominance of mirrored surfaces reflecting characters, and even his friend and psychological counselor for IKZ, Franz Hahn (Wolfgang Schenck), keeps numerous fish tanks in his apartment, themselves microcosms for observing the behavior of an isolated collective. World on a Wire asks big questions about how we define our reality, and how it defines us, and who it is that really pulls the strings on all us marionettes.
Recommended for: Fans of a psychologically thrilling science fiction film which plays out like a pulpy philosophical, science fiction novel on the screen. It is a clever and engaging tale and also ahead of its time in predicting the nature of virtual reality in conjunction with defining the self.