World on a Wire

Rainer Werner Fassbinder may be the ultimate cineaste director. When you're in a discussion about movies, if the person you're talking to starts talking about Fassbinder, it's almost a punchline. He was the darling of the erudite and anti-establishment types, and was amazingly prolific: he directed 40 films and 24 stage plays, yet died at the age of 37.

I saw a few Fassbinder films, though I don't remember exactly which ones, in college. Certainly I saw The Marriage of Maria Braun, and probably Lola and Veronika Voss, and maybe Lili Marleen. All of these were art house staples during the late '70s and early '80s. So I was surprised to learn that Fassbinder really wanted to be a director of mass appeal films.

World on a Wire in consistent with that wish. It is Fassbinder's only science-fiction film, though it is structured like a noir. It was made in 1973 for German television, airing as a two-part miniseries, and shot in 16MM to give it a really cheesy look. But it at its heart it is a movie about an existential crisis.

The film is set mostly at a research corporation that has developed an artificial world via computer, called Simulacron. The people inside this world are sentient. Ostensibly it is to be used to determine trends, since it based on the "real" world, they can observe this world and make estimates. The oily head of the institute, though, wants to make it available to a steel conglomerate.

The creator of the world, Vollmer, seems to have a nervous breakdown and dies. His second, Fred Stiller (Klaus Lowitsch) is promoted to replace him, but smells something rotten. He is really confused when the director of security vanishes during a conversation with him. Then he asks about this man, and no one acknowledges his existence.

Stiller delves deeper into the mystery, and at the end of part one discovers what most viewers will have figured out: the "real" world is actually a simulation itself. Knowledge of this is dangerous, and Stiller goes on the run, pursued by the law and corporate goons.

World on a Wire, despite it's shoddy look, is a decent thriller. As I said, it's more like a noir, with Lowitsch playing the Bogart role. But it's also got a touch of James Bond, as Stiller drives a sports car, is frequently in a tuxedo, and almost as frequently is bare chested. There are a couple of femme fatales--Barbara Valentin is Stiller's new secretary (who is spying on him) and favors outfits that are usually only found at adult film award shows. Mascha Rabben is Vollmer's daughter, whom Stiller will fall in love with.

Fassbinder gives the film a lot of style without overwhelming it. There are mirrors everywhere, and during Vollmer's breakdown he asks a government official to look into a mirror and describe what he sees. Fassbinder does have fun with cheesy B-film conventions, such as absurd musical stings that accompany the hero learning things (usually while also turning his head). The notion that our lives are not "real," or are not unique, is not new, going back to such other things as Horton Hears a Who. But the script, by Fassbinder and Daniel Galouye, based on his novel, is fairly intelligent.