I fell asleep during The Matrix. Its themes seemed to me, at the time of its release, more or less just trite ideas that I had already read about in various intro philosophy texts and whatnot, and the areas it touched on were never my areas of interest in philosophy anyway. It muddled its religious undertones, and the ethical questions were given short shrift. Fifteen years later, I watched a movie nearly twice as long, which eschews action in favor of psychological intensity, and tackles many--but not all--of the same questions.

It was much better this time around.

The first and best difference is aesthetic. Fassbinder has created a science fiction world that looks schlubby. It's populated by suits and…

I’d never heard of World on a Wire before Criterion’s announcement of its re-mastering and subsequent theatrical re-release in 2010. The trailer they’d put together hooked me immediately, based mostly on the retro-future set design and the promise of a strange, hard sci-fi thriller full of intrigue and mystery. The picture did not disappoint. With the recent blu ray release, I was thankful to be able to sit down with this epic film once again and try and make sense of any details I’d missed the first time around.

In the not-too-distant future, a supercomputer called ‘Simulacron’ provides scientists with the ability to simulate and study a virtual society comprised of 10,000 ‘identity units’. When the technical director of the…

Fassbinder gets the jump on decades of philosophical sci-fi with this miniseries. His penchant for reflective surfaces and obscuring glass is taken to an early extreme here, with countless shots incorporating reflections into blocking or framing characters through glass that often warps dimensions and even at its least intrusive makes it clear that everyone is being watched. (The adjective "cinematic" is used freely and almost always emptily in current discussions of TV, but Fassbinder, like the other European auteurs who experimented on the small-screen, comes closest to cinema by expressly foregrounding the format of their television productions with an aesthetic that shows them adapting to its different demands and even the implications of its alternate screen.)

There's way too much…

Reflections, distortions, refractions, obstructions... Reality is seldom clear-cut, and World on a Wire takes that notion to the extreme. One of the most impressive made-for-TV movies I have ever seen, Fassbinder takes us on a twisted tour of technology, our minds, and reality. Heavy on psychology, philosophy, and gleefully 70s-style zoom-ins, Fassbinder's flair for visually arresting cinematography take this sci-fi tale from dated to exemplary.

The use of mirrors, while seeming almost heavy-handed at times (nearly every other shot seems to have a reflection of one of the speaking actors), hammers home the underlying theme of paranoia - both of the invisible limits of our own perception and our minds' attempts to enlarge our world beyond those limits. In browsing…

The first Fassbinder film I’ve seen and a really interesting one at that. 

Not only does World on a Wire predate the advent of the cyberpunk subgenre by nearly a decade, it also employs a neo-noir aesthetic much like Blade Runner would 9 years later. To call this film ahead of its time would be a massive understatement. 

The film itself contains some of the most brilliant cinematography and blocking I have ever seen, Fassbinder constantly films his actors in mirrors and you never know if you are watching the characters or merely their reflections. Fitting for film that deals so heavily with the nature of reality.

Without spoiling anything, as this is a film I’d highly recommend watching, I…