Rainer Werner Fassbinder's (Veronika Voss/Ali: Fear Eats the Soul) 1973 mini-series about a future society where virtual worlds are the norm. A man at a corporate concern is informed one of his colleagues has gone missing. He takes it upon himself to investigate but the mystery deepens when we find things aren't what they seem to be. The world is, as the characters know it, a simulation so the idea an individual has gone missing literally doesn't compute especially when obstacles & personnel continue to hinder our hero's progress eventually to the point where he's accused of murdering the missing man sending him on the run w/the authorities & his supposed friends & colleagues out to allay his fears that all will be well. Eschewing special effects or extremely obvious costumes (which would telegraph to the audience 'hey it's the future!') this production wisely (& probably because of budget constraints) use what they had & let the audience's imagination fill in the blanks as to the film's time frame. It reminded me of what Jean-Luc Godard did in Alphaville in 1965 & David Cronenberg did in a short he made called Crimes of the Future in 1970, search for modern existing architecture & utilize it in such a way, people will buy into the conceit. As to this film, which runs about 3 ½ hours (I had to watch it in sections), the actors are fine & workmanlike (Fassbinder like Kubrick would not be called an actor's director) which lets the environment & atmosphere speak for itself but if you're looking for an emote-fest, don't bother, this is a film about ideas, writ large which you'll either dig or not. Future Scorsese D. P. Michael Ballhaus was the co-cinematographer here & as remarked by the intro by Ben Mankiewicz on TCM, this film was remade in 1999 as The Thirteenth Floor (it used the same source novel) which I remember seeing but got nothing from it.
Review of World on a Wire
