World on a Wire

Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder

1973 / 212min / 35mm

Fassbinder’s paranoiac, prescient foray into science-fiction, adapted from Daniel F. Galouye’s 1964 novel Simulacron-3, follows cybernetics engineer Klaus Löwitsch as he unlocks a Chinese puzzle box-like corporate conspiracy in a disco chic near-future Europa where zonked consumers obey the commands of capital in somnambulistic reverie and Corvette Stingrays glide along to the strains of Fleetwood Mac’s “Albatross.” “A very beautiful story that depicts a world where one is able to make projections of people using a computer. And, of course, this leads to the uncertainty of whether someone himself is a projection, since in the virtual world projections resemble reality. Perhaps another, larger world has made us as a virtual one?”—R.W. Fassbinder