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World of Tomorrow

5/11/2016

25 Comments

 

B+
3.19

A futuristic clone introduces her young ancestor to the various ways that humanity has adapted to death.

Directed by Don Hertzfeldt
Starring Julia Pott and Winona Mae
Initial Review by Shane Setnor

Picture
Dying is dead.

Well, at least in the future it seems reasonable to think that dying, as we know it, will no longer exist. Blair and I have often had a conversation about uploading our brain into computers by the time we’re old. It’s a very intriguing possibility in my opinion, though Blair seems less enthused. Just thinking of the possibility is where my thought exercise ends. Don Hertzfeld, however, gives us 16 minutes of heartfelt melancholy and absurd sci-fi that shows that technology isn’t what is interesting about the future, but how it changes humanity is the question.

World of Tomorrow is about a person from the future meeting the earlier version of themselves. Future Emily (Julia Pott) is the third clone of Emily Prime (voiced by 4 year-old Winona Mae, the niece of Hertzfeld). Future Emily almost unemotionally tells Emily Prime about her past, which is Emily Prime’s future. Pott’s soothing, almost robotic voice is subtly rippled with pangs of sadness and longing. As much as we see living forever as the greatest gift technology provides, Future Emily reminds us of the immeasurable loss and sadness that would surely follow.

This makes me reflect on the loss I’ve experienced in just 34 years. Of course, this always leads back to Geoff passing away at a far too young age. Despite all the good memories and the passage of time smoothing out the edges of his death, there’s still a hole in my heart (or soul or consciousness – however you view it). This feeling, of course, is part of what make us human. We miss the past. We miss people and long for more time with them. With more time in this existence, we’ll face more potential misery as well.  Future Emily drives the point home with, “I am very proud of my sadness, because it means I am more alive.”

This line resonates with me every time I’ve watched this short film, which is probably in the double digits at this point.

It flips my thoughts of the future on its head. The promise of ever-lasting life and amazing technology is supposed to be a promise that is entirely comforting and happy, but it turns out we’re still human, even when we try to tamp out the “negative” aspects of humanity (dying and the erosion of our bodies). The pain I feel from Geoff’s passing is a real part of me that I would never trade in. I wouldn’t want a future where that emotion was stripped from me, so Hertzfeld’s bizarre future works on me from a relatable level.

This is a testament to a well-crafted story that doesn’t allow Hertzfeld’s crude animations, his first foray into using computer animation instead of pencil and paper, distract from what is going on. In their simplicity and absurdity, the visuals add to what is really a pretty heavy story by giving us something that keeps the tone light and whimsical, despite the sad robots stuck forever roaming the moon for unknown reasons. (Again, the gift of immortality is seen as a curse when Future Emily recites the poem.)

The finishing touch of the story is a brilliant stroke by Hertzfeld. Earlier in the short, launching people too far into the past when time-traveling was played for laughs, one of a dozen visual jokes. Calling back to that moment and sending Emily Prime too far into the past fits in with the narrative that technology can’t save humanity from sadness and from itself. Emily Prime shivering in the past is equal parts funny, sad and thought-provoking because now I’m concerned about what happens to Future Emily and we’ve opened up a new bag of worms.

This short completely works on me. It can be harder to judge a short film for depth, but World of Tomorrow packs enough punch to give it the substance of a feature-length film. Every time, it leaves me wanting more. 

A
25 Comments
Shane
5/11/2016 10:32:58 am

You didn't even mention that this was a Pliny's ship situation! Pliny's ship!

Reply
Bobby
5/14/2016 12:13:49 pm

Pliny (the Elder and especially the Younger) is one of the more sought after beers in the country!

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Bobby
5/14/2016 12:16:42 pm

And isn't it Theseus' ship?

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Bobby
5/14/2016 12:17:12 pm

Or some other ship completely!?!?!

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Shane
5/14/2016 01:28:58 pm

I'm a fool. It is Theseus.

Sean
5/12/2016 01:15:24 pm

I'm not into existential thought exercises. A few well placed lines and metaphors of our own existence being wrapped up in technology most of it a bit on the nose. I'm glad it was <20 minutes, it was long enough to make the statement it intended. I applaud Hertzfedlt for not attempting to make a feature length film out of it.

Just not something that appeals to me so I'd be left with the standard meh C+ but I'll give it a B- because it did what it wanted and didn't waste its time aimlessly.

I probably would've liked it more in college- not because I was a more existential thinker but because I would've been stoned.


I'm more interested in Shane and Blair having conversations about downloading their brains to a computer...

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Shane
5/12/2016 01:49:54 pm

I firmly believe that that's our future. I don't think Blair is buying what I'm selling.

If you could do that, wouldn't you? How many year away from replacing our brains with operating systems? If you do that, are you still you?

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Sean
5/12/2016 03:44:11 pm

I have no interest in immortality. An o/s implant to increase brain efficiency would be a different choice and a slippery slope to no longer being you.

Shane
5/13/2016 11:04:18 am

So does one modification change it from no longer being you or does it need more?

Sean
5/13/2016 02:17:10 pm

I'm sure there are shades of gray to be considered. I wouldn't say a chip of some sort to increase efficiency and filter out garbage would cease to be you but downloading the ability to play the piano or do kungfu would be a stretch.

Example on the efficiency. I can remember several times being stuck on problems in a math test where I could vividly remember the specific example from class the test question pulled from but my memory was unable to piece together enough of the example to retrain myself to complete the problem every time. If something could allow you to experience "Total Recall" and use that memory fragment that wouldn't be so bad.

Sean
5/13/2016 02:20:26 pm

There, I'm engaging your question. What say you?

Also, what kind of ethical, moral, legal implications would result from the development of such technology. It's always nice to think of the benevolent side of fighting Altzheimers or expanding one's potential but there'd undoubtedly be people who would use the brain downloads and clonings for nefarious means.

Bryan
5/13/2016 03:19:05 pm

Isn't this how the new Planet of the Apes movies start?

Bobby
5/14/2016 01:29:17 pm

If I recall correctly, Shane loves slipper slope arguments!

But... with that, does replacing pieces make you less of yourself, or does it make the new pieces a part of you? So, in turn, you'd always still be yourself, even if eventually replaced 100% over time, as each piece has become a part of you. Does time matter? Does gradual change keep you intact more than a mass upgrade/replacement all at once?

Shane
5/14/2016 01:30:47 pm

I think you're on to something with the downloading skill sets thing. I hadn't thought of separating that from a system for more efficient recall. There's a non-arbitrary line in between.

Bobby
5/14/2016 02:07:36 pm

I would question why a chip, or some form of efficient download, would cease you from being you. If it's simply different way of receiving information, instead of our usual way of learning, that doesn't change who you are as a whole, right? Just one aspect of it... and even that is questionable, since it's enhancing. It's virtually impossible to define what make somebody who they are, in terms of on thing.... hence all the need for believing there is a soul or some higher stream of conscience. Can those be replaced?

Shane
5/16/2016 11:28:40 am

Yeah. I don't know where the line is. Is there even a line at all?

Sean's suggestion of efficiency vs "learning" new things is a good one. If you can just input data, are you human any more? My initial instinct would be no, but instead you'd be a hybrid. Some sort of freak that science created.

Bryan
5/12/2016 06:36:30 pm

I'd have to watch that movie 20 times to understand much beyond a few good lines.

The girl's name is Emily Prime, but I think she's from the past. Shouldn't future Emily's be "Emily Prime" or "Emily Prime Prime" or "Emily Double Prime"

The opening guy looks like a stick figure with a gut and a penis. I was disappointed it was a phone.

Kid Emily speaking is cute.

Immortality as a constant cloning of oneself with absorbed memories is a terribly fascinating concept. I have told many students that they may be the first generation to find the "Fountain of Youth."

The dead bodies as shooting stars after cheap time travel is hilarious and morbid.

I have no idea what I'm grading this. C, but this could be swayed from B to F. I want some outside influence.

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Jon
5/14/2016 04:11:21 am

World of Tomorrow is a dense packet of profundity in a 16 minute shell. Whatever skimping Don Hertzfeldt did on the drawings of people, he more than made up for in the breadth of issues on the table. It's also got plenty of humorous sugar to help the hard sci-fi medicine go down. It's both a delight and a head-scratcher, and makes me want to seek out Hertzfeldt's other films.

To get the light stuff out of the way early, for all its dark and heady themes, World of Tomorrow is irresistible in its humor and whimsy. Future Emily and Emily Prime have a hilariously-written chemistry. I don't know how the actors recorded their lines, like if Emily Prime was just allowed to go nuts with a stream of 4-year-old consciousness, but damn, does she have great timing. Switching back and forth between clinical talk of time travel and cloning with squiggly triangles and Wiggle, Wiggle, Wiggle is a simple stroke of genius. The animation is finely tuned to make Emily Prime look as cute as possible, as those are the hardest working pigtails in all of cartoon-dom. Simon's another inspired creation, going from amorphous baby blob to vibrator-shaped icon of loneliness. From what little I know of Hertzfeldt, all his films contain stick figures, but compared to the computer wizardry of Pixar, this is exactly as enthralling and entertaining.

That said, the science fiction concepts come maybe a little too fast. Each isn't given much time to breathe and be explored as anything more than a mundane feature of the future, which may have been the point but is still a little frustrating when the world is as charming as it is. There's time travel, cloning, brain transfer, space travel, artificial intelligence, alien life, and human-fuel pump humping, all of which deserve their own 16-minute Hertzfeldt short (especially that last one, amiright?). It sounds like some of us think about these issues more than others, and besides simply presenting them, World of Tomorrow doesn't spend many precious seconds on how they actually work and affect peoples' lives. Taken together, all that's left for each is a blurb, with the exception of the darkly humorous unpredictability of time travel.

The above isn't the most relevant criticism, because World of Tomorrow is more interested in the why of technology than the how. Many of the sci-fi concepts are addressed in the context of staving off death, or cruelly introducing the fear of death to robots. For the humans of this future, a miserable existence in a box is better than no existence at all. In the face of impartial, interstellar disaster, it's better to take a chance on time travel that will almost certainly result in a fiery death, because at least that's taking action, hope against hopelessness. The tone of World of Tomorrow makes all these efforts seem ludicrous. Future Emily seems like she has some perspective on all this and is accepting her pending doom, but she does still imperil her tiny ancestor with time travel for the sake of a happy memory before she dies. I can imagine Hertzfeldt seeing some contemporary example of age-defying nonsense and being inspired to depict humans doing the exact same things but with ever-increasing means. If that's good enough for an animated short, it's certainly good enough for a feature.

There's a lot more to World of Tomorrow, like class and memory, but I'm not feeling especially verbose at the moment. In summation, Hertzfeldt built a powerful little nugget of a film, though I wish it had more science in it, accompanied by baffled looks and non sequiturs from Emily Prime. B+

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Shane
5/14/2016 01:36:26 pm

Please note this for review of the year material.

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Bobby
5/14/2016 02:02:52 pm

His Simpson's couch is ooooouuuuut there!

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Bobby
5/14/2016 01:17:39 pm

Well, you all know I love stuff like this. World of Tomorrow is among my favorite things that I've watched in recent years.

I love the simple animation for Emily, David, Simon, etc.. especially surrounded by the beautiful colors and memories around them. I think we get a really nice old school Sci-Fi feel here. It works well in contrast to the complexity that time travel and memory extraction would actually be. Also, I feel like if it was more than the near stick figures we've given, it would have stripped Emily Prime of her innocence and put more focus on the art than the story and philosophy, which, as Shane points out, is pretty heavy.

Speaking of the story... this is my kind of thing. Topics that make me think and ask, pokes at the human condition that remind me of of what we are and what we're doing (or maybe can do), especially with technology. I'm not sure there's much for me to say here that Shane and Jon haven't touched on at some point.. and it's better for discussion than outright description. Which is why the film works so well, I think. It's not looking to lecture and give us all of the answers (if there really are any) to its many topics. World of Tomorrow does a great job of presenting a lot of ideas, sparking our own thoughts and questions.

It seems like each time I watch it, a different line grabs me more than before. Some of them are brilliantly humorous and spot on... be it in their reflection of us, or simply Emily Prime's reactions. So, here are some of my favorites:

"Simon followed me around for 7 years, saying unintelligible things. We fell in love. "

"I inherited the memory of myself meeting you right now..."
'what?'

"I do not have the mental or emotional capacity to deal with his loss..." which is basically just, "I can't deal with this shit."

Followed by a more serious and profound, as Shane noted, "I am very proud of my sadness, because it means I am more alive."

Sometimes it's simple and unoriginal:
"That is the thing about the present, Emily, You only appreciate it, when it's the past."

Or heartfelt and solemn advice:
"Do not lose time on daily trivialities. Do not dwell on petty detail. For all these things melt away and drift apart within the obscure traffic of time. Live well, and live broadly. You are alive and living now. Now is the envy of all the dead."

only followed by the type of reaction we tend to have to such things.. a pretty dismissive, "okay!"

I also have to give credit to Hertzfeldt for his editing with his niece's voice 'acting'. It was actually a great idea to let her react and respond naturally while playing and plugging it in to the film. There's such a natural feel to the responses and timing, which is a huge part of its success.

The first time I watched World of Tomorrow, I gave it an A. But, with multiple viewings, it's earned a spot with the rest of my favorites. I'm not sure how it would do as a full length feature, but I'd certainly watch it and mostly likely enjoy it. It is, however, I think... perfect as is. A+

"What a happy day it is..."

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Shane
5/16/2016 11:29:16 am

I like this review a lot as well.

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Cooker
5/21/2016 10:38:08 am

I liked the concept. I liked the animation. But this just felt like PBS and/or Nickelodeon in-between show filler to me. Meh. C+

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Drew
6/28/2016 11:20:57 pm

I did not know what to make of this. At first, I felt like Cooker. It was nice and had some witty lines that made me laugh but nothing special. After reading Shane's nice review, however, it gave a different perspective on the characters.

It feels a bit different losing someone close but having those memories really do make one feel alive. It is tough but the memories are great. I am still unsure how to feel about the film but it resonated with me in some way.

Grade: B

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Blair
7/22/2016 10:51:14 am

I'm finally reviewing this. With "Jon-Kissel" as Geoffrey calls him, living with us, I now feel my participation will increase...we'll see!

I loved this short film. So much so, that I showed it to my high school youth. The cold science/talk of beautiful dead bodies soaring through the sky is balanced with the innocent sweet voice of 4 year old Emily Prime. I love the somewhat simple drawings as I feel that adds to softening the raw and harsh reality of our future.

Things I found intriguing: The notion that as our bodies advance in a bionic way, our ability to emote and empathize falters. What Future Emily craves more than anything are memories of joy, "that's me and mommy walking...", sadness, and love. Just as in our society, those who have money "advance" but are still not truly satisfied. The film's ability to make stretched dead heads bouncing back and forth on a robot box and the inevitable falling star like death of time travel lighthearted is commendable. It gets watchers to ask hard questions about our future - what would you do to not die? At what cost? Is it worth it?

Love it! Solid A from me.

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