An examination of Fassbinder’s enigmatic, mind-bending sci-fi opus, World on a Wire.
An unhinged computer programmer Professor Vollmer (Adrian Hoven) holds a pocket mirror to secretary of state Von Weinlaub (Heinz Meier). As Von Weinlaub reluctantly gazes into his reflection, Volmer exclaims, “You are nothing more than the image others have made of you.”
Vollmers’ sentiment evokes an ontological terror familiar in the sci-fi genre: our world, ourselves, and everything we perceive to be real is actually a computer-generated illusion. More specifically, his words introduce the agonizing, paranoid tone of World on a Wire, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1973, three-and-a-half hour long, two-part miniseries. The dystopian sci-fi miniseries, which celebrates its 45th anniversary this year, predates the analogs used in Avatar (2009), the confusion over artificial and human intelligence in Blade Runner (1982), and, of course, the now ubiquitous exploration of simulated realities in The Matrix (1999), Inception (2010), The Truman Show (1998), and Synecdoche, New York (2008).
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