- Rainer Werner Fassbinder's World on a Wire is an insane hall of mirrors that somehow makes several now overly familiar sci-fi tropes all seem new and wonderful. If you've seen any of Blade Runner, Total Recall, Dark City, The Matrix, or Inception, you've already encountered the film's basic concepts, namely artificial vs. real memories and the true nature of reality (or realities). At 212 minutes, World on a Wire is over an hour longer than any of those films, and it features considerably less action than any of them. It's also less famous than all of them and, believe it or not, easily better than half of them.
- At the center of the film is a man named Fred Stiller (Klaus Löwitsch) who inherits the job of running a supercomputer that simulates real life. The previous man in charge, an abrasive professorial type named Vollmer (Adrian Hoven), appeared to have gone insane just prior to his unexplained death, so it has fallen to Stiller to take over. His imperious boss Siskins (Karl Heinz Vosgerau) just wants Stiller to keep things running smoothly while the company quietly sells speculative predictions to steel manufacturers, but Stiller is preoccupied with rumors of some profound discovery that Vollmer made just before his death. That the man who informed Stiller about this discovery disappeared from both a party and the collective consciousness of everyone Stiller knows just makes his situation all the more intriguing.
- As his investigation proceeds, Stiller encounters several people who are seemingly on his side, including his redoubtable assistant Hahn (Wolfgang Schenck), company psychiatrist Walfang (Günter Lamprecht), and an investigating journalist named Rupp (Ulli Lommel). Less obvious are the motives of his voluptuous secretary Gloria Fromm (Barbara Valentin) and the late Dr. Vollmer's daughter Eva (Mascha Rabben), not to mention the sinister Siskins and his various minions. Whereas most films would have made an exaggerated spectacle out of Stiller's visits to the virtual world, this one prefers to take it only in brief glimpses, one of which is interrupted by a nearly fatal computer error that may have been an act of sabotage. It's nice to finally see a fictional computer program that crashes as dramatically as most of mine do.
- The real treat in viewing World on a Wire, however, is to see just how many reflective surfaces can be incorporated into a single film. I honestly noticed only one scene that did not contain any mirrors or windows, and Fassbinder goes to great (and often amusing) lengths to capture reflections whenever possible. The film's composition is nothing short of astounding, made even that much more impressive by the sheer number of such shots in a film of this length. Add in the retro fashion stylings, weird combinations of electronic and baroque music, and the zaniness of Stiller eventually being attacked by dogs and trees, and World on a Wire suddenly seems like the quintessential 70's sci-fi mind-bender. By the way, that one crucial scene without mirrors occurs at the film's end and tells you all you need to know about how real Stiller's world really is.
- Eddie Constantine has a small role in this film, too.
