World on a Wire (Welt am Draht)

WORLD ON A WIRE (Welt am Draht) – made for TV                       A                    

Cologne, Munich, Paris  (Pt I 99 mi, Pt II 106 mi)  January – March 1973  d:  Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1973):

“I directed a series of two one-and-a-half-hour segments based on a novel by Daniel F. Galouyé.  It’s a very beautiful story called WORLD ON A WIRE that depicts a world where one is able to make projections of people with a computer. And of course that leads to the uncertainty of whether someone is himself a projection, since in this virtual world the projections resemble reality.  Perhaps another larger world made us as a virtual one?  In this sense it deals with an old philosophical model, which here takes on a certain horror.”

One of the most unique works over the course of Fassbinder’s entire career, his only venture into science fiction, where this may be the very first Virtual Reality movie, though it was readily explored on sci-fi TV shows like Star Trek (1966 – 1969) or Doctor Who (1963 – 1989).  This was also made for German TV, which is mindblowing in itself, as there is simply nothing else out there like this on TV, either before or since.  Some may find this excessively slow, as there’s no action to speak of for the first two hours, really only showing up in the finale sequence, yet this continually holds the viewer’s attention by the sheer boldness of the subject matter and the mind-altering production values used by Fassbinder, filtering nearly every shot through doorways, long hallways, frosted windows, glass fishbowls, peeking through a hole in the wall or around some object, where there are multiple reflections throughout caused by the incessant or one might say obsessive use of mirrors.  Only CHINESE ROULETTE (1976) comes close to using this kind of dazzling, shooting-through-the-Looking Glass stylization, both movies shot by cinematographer Michael Ballhaus.  In terms of look, this film most closely resembles the mannequin acting style of THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT (1972), where naked or fashionably dressed characters have a tendency to stare off into empty space, which in this film works excessively well, especially because it is projecting an artificially designed virtual world that contains no signs of human life, as it’s all a computerized reproduction. 

Adaptated by Fassbinder and Fritz Müller-Scherz from a 1964 Daniel F. Galouyé novel Simulacron 3, where computers can create projections of people, leading one to wonder if they, themselves, are just a projection?  This is a paranoid, ALPHAVILLE (1965)-style, corporate-controlled world of super computers where the company director mysteriously commits suicide, but not before muttering one of the prevalent themes of the film, “You are nothing more than the image others have made of you,” referring to the co-opting of his brilliant creation by an all-controlling inside elite, where programmed individuals are indistinguishable from actual humans. The powerful interests of the U.S. Steel corporation intervenes and wants to use the successor, Klaus Löwitsch as Fred Stiller, to manipulate the international markets, as the artificial computer design so exactly replicates our own world that the computer has the ability to accurately predict future trends before they happen.  He meets Eva Vollmer, Mascha Rabben, the daughter of the deceased former director, and the two begin to realize that they may be artificial, controlled by a higher intelligence, their knowledge of which could cause a threat to those actually in control, so it is a world where love is threatened by the repressed police state.  Can humans prevail?  Initially shot on 16 mm, now blown up to 35 mm, this is riveting from start to finish, adding improbable flourishes of dark humor, simply a stunning, highly original and unusual film, with Fassbinder regulars Adrian Hoven, Ivan Desny, Günter Lamprecht, Margit Carstensen, Ingrid Caven, Ulli Lommel, Kurt Raab, and even a brief appearance by Gottfried John. 

Certainly one prevalent theme is the Third Reich dream of world domination, only using a behind the scenes business model to accomplish what the German Army couldn’t achieve militarily.  Whoever controls the computers controls the world, including a Virtual World of people who are all prisoners in this alternate world, like the most brilliantly designed gulag imaginable, as all of the artificial creations are programmed to work solely to benefit and improve the lives of those living at the highest level, the real humans, creating a Virtual Reality society that remains a METROPOLIS (1927) designed underground world, where captive artificial slaves can never escape to the higher ground.  Fassbinder beautifully enhances this Nazi design as only he can, through a staged musical production in a beer hall, actually the Alcazar in Paris, where Solange Pradel performs her smoky Marlene Dietrich renditions of “See What the Boys in the Back Room Will Have” and “Lili Marleen,” sung to the shadowed images of marching boots.  Actually much of the futuristic design of the film was shot inside shopping malls, upscale hotels, and in the streets of Paris and Munich, adding that 70’s impersonalized, avant garde, corporate glass-windowed skyscraper look that defined Alan J. Pakula’s modernist THE PARALLAX VIEW (1974) a year later, also using an oblique and radically abstract electronic score by Gottfried Hüngsberg that reflects psychic distress, but also a clever use of Wagner’s Liebestod, synthesized Bach, Strauss, and Peter Green’s strangely hypnotic “Albatross.”  Much of the first half introduces the viewer to the concept of a simulated world, while the second half shows Stiller growing ever more suspicious and paranoid, feeling continuously threatened, like a rat in a maze, as if he’s being hunted down by the controllers at the highest levels. 

Much of the narrative centers around people who simply disappear from reality, people that Stiller remembers, but everyone else has been programmed to forget, wiping that memory off the face of the earth, even in police and newspaper reports, except it still exists in Stiller’s memory, making him think after awhile that he’s the one going crazy since no one else recollects his version of events.  This is also a brilliant depiction of the vulnerability (and need) of outsiderism, showing how the State can easily program reality to reflect the propagandized views of the masses, where anyone who doesn’t conform to those views feels particularly powerless and isolated, subject to police arrest for becoming a threat to the stability of society, which almost perfectly resembles the real life fate of currently imprisoned Mikhail Khodorkovsky, former head of the Russian oligarchy and the wealthiest man in the country before Russian President Vladimir Putin returned the nation to its police state origins, not to mention former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko who was assassinated by radioactive poisoning in 2006 allegedly by a Russian secret agent while Litvinenko was living in political asylum.  As outlandish as that sounds, that’s effectively the story here, as Stiller literally falls from grace in the corporate hierarchy and begins to see how he’s being used and manipulated by higher powers, how he’s taking the fall for their crimes, where his name is being posted on television news reports as a murderer to explain the strange disappearance of people.  Barbara Valentin is exquisite as the voluptuous corporate secretary who appears to be a virtual projection of the manager’s dreams and desires, also there are extraordinary set designs for party sequences, indoor swimming pools, and beer halls, where ironically the music of Elvis Presley blares out to a programmed virtual world of utter conformity, where society is in such lockstep they actually resemble the horrified depiction of zombies in horror movies.  From this State controlled world domination, can humans survive?  This is a beautifully staged theatrical rendition on the question of free will, where the entire planet appears to be an artificially designed mirror reflection of the real world.       

Vlast (Power)

VLAST (Power)                      B                     

USA  (88 mi)  2010  d:  Cathryn Collins           Official site

This has always been a fascinating story of a behind-the-scenes secret service power to extinguish or detain individuals considered of interest to the absolute power of the State.  Earlier in this decade, two stories held the world’s attention, the 2003 arrest of billionaire oil baron Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who overstayed his welcome in Russia, and the 2006 London poisoning death of a former KGB agent,  Alexander Litvinenko, who was living in political asylum, having written two books accusing the KGB of using acts of terrorism to bring Vladimir Putin to power.  The question is whether this film could actually add anything to these already widely covered news stories.  Choosing to deal exclusively with the rise and fall of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, he was the head of the Russian oligarchy, a tiny group of new business entrepreneurs who exploited the disintegration of the Soviet Union to loot and/or earn mass quantities of wealth, hundreds of billions of dollars from the suddenly wide open oil markets in Russia, signing highly lucrative contracts with the government to acquire newly privatized industries, which consolidated power under the corporate name of Yukos.  Khodorkovsky, however, was not only interested in becoming a successful businessman, suddenly finding himself the richest man in Russia, but also a social reformer interested in democracy, transparency, and opening up the Russian markets, where just months before announcing a deal that would have opened Yukos, a formerly State-controlled oil industry, to investments by Western corporations, including U.S. corporations, he and his partners were arrested and jailed for trumped up charges of fraud and tax evasion, where he’s been confined behind bars now for nearly a decade.

What was a brief dream of democracy under the first elected Russian President Boris Yeltsin suddenly disappeared, replaced by former KGB agent Vladimir Putin as President, who returned Russia to the days of ruthless, totalitarian control run by a police state, once more under the command of the FSB, Federal Security Service, replacing in name only what was the KGB secret police.  Before becoming President, Putin was interestingly the Party head responsible for the foreign property of the State and organized the transfer of former assets from the Communist Party and the Soviet Union to the Russian Federation.  Most all Westerners believe Putin’s incarceration of Khodorkovsky is largely a case of political suppression, as he was viewed as a likely candidate to run against Putin, or at least back certain reform movements in the upcoming elections prior to his arrest, now he is not likely to ever see the light of day so long as Putin remains in power.  Before his initial sentence could expire, additional charges were brought against Khodorkovsky, namely embezzlement, suggesting every dime he earned was embezzled, where his initial 9-year sentence was increased to 14 years, and Khodorkovsky was later transferred to another prison in an undisclosed location to serve out the remainder of his sentence. 

While this is an examination of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, it’s also a disturbing portrait of what has happened to the fading hopes of a blindsided and obliterated democratic movement inside Russia.  The filmmaker chooses excellent speakers, including Russian expert economists from The Financial Times and The Economist who provide remarkably lucid commentary, also Khodorkovsky’s mother, who has seen and heard all about this side of Russia before, having lived through the Stalinist purges of the 30’s and the era of gulags, along with his U.S. educated son, now exiled from Russia and living in America.  What this film makes clear is the full extent of the current purge, as Russia seized the entire Yukos enterprise and sold it off publicly to the highest bidder, though only one person apparently met the criteria, and that was a former friend of Putin’s from the KGB, who consolidated the business with another Putin ally, so now Putin has control over the entire Russian oil industry, just as if it was nationalized, but under the ownership of his friends and allies who have done exactly as the oligarchs, but remain under government protection.  Meanwhile Putin has arrested over 200 former employees of Yukos, sent them all to jail, along with the lawyers and law firms that in any way represented the company, dissolving those businesses as well.  Along with the arrests, there have been multiple home searches, oftentimes several, where one imprisoned company executive indicated this is how they do it in Russia nowadays, that formerly they used firing squads.

A lawyer indicated there is less justice today in Russia under Putin than there was in the former Soviet Union thirty or forty years ago.  This portrait of a fraud democracy, where all democratic parties disappear and only one party appears on the ballet, where Putin and his minions run unopposed, where the secret police continues to play havoc with its own citizens, ruling with an imperial iron fist, controlling the state authorized news, just like in the days of Stalin.  After the fall of the Berlin wall and the rise of democratic movements, including a series of judicial reforms, no one would believe they could go backwards in time so thoroughly where they are back to an autocratic rule.  One of the most impressive voices in the film is a historic archivist, Arseny Roginsky, who served four years in a gulag during the 1980’s for attempting to write a truthful account of history.  After Khodorkovsky was slammed by the Russian press for being an enemy of the state, pictured as a traitor willing to sell off Russian assets to the United States, their historic arch rival and enemy, Roginsky surmised Khodorkovsky, who could have fled at any moment prior to the arrest, chose to serve his punishment as a way of resurrecting his image, by standing up to the Kremlin, continuing to have faith in the democratic reforms that have all but been abolished in Russia during his incarceration.  While incarcerated, he has remained defiant, denunciating what has happened as a series of outright lies and secret service cover ups, where there is no evidence of any crime committed, yet all the courts now bow down to Putin, creating a Shakespearean Richard III style power grab.