World of Tomorrow

I recently wrote an article for Influx magazine about Don Hertzfeldt and his wonderful animated short films. In this I mentioned that his newest film, "World of Tomorrow", will be debuting at the end of March. However, this film is different from the usual Hertzfeldt release because it's his first film done digitally as well as his first released directly on demand.

The film is an unusual sci-fi short that begins with a small child, Emily, being contacted by a clone of herself over two hundred years in the future. It seems that many folks living in our future are clones--often second, third or fourth generation clones. And, surprisingly, the adult Emily clone of the future wants to bring young Emily to her time to show her about and muse about life. As for young Emily, she sounds like a three year-old and seems sweet but oblivious to the importance of all the things her clone tells her about life. So much about the clone's life is empty and sad...and life in the future sounds that way in general. Even worse, the world apparently is about to end and the Emily clone just wants to see her original self to say goodbye.

If all this sounds maudlin, it sometimes is. The film is an odd combination of existential angst, loneliness and even dark comedy. For some, the film will obviously have some significance and deeper meaning. For others it will just be silly, absurd and good for a laugh. It's amazing how many of Hertzfeldt's films have various levels on which you can enjoy them.

As far as the quality of the film goes, all of Hertzfeldt's cartoons have stick figures and very simple animation and because of that I am hesitant to rate this film higher. However, because it is digital, it looks richer and more colorful than a typical Hertzfeldt film. But it's the strangeness and depth to the story that make it wonderful. And, the amazing voice of young Emily (Winona Mae) will make you smile or even laugh--despite the strangeness and seriousness of the plot. Overall, it's a heck of a film and I can understand why it was recently awarded the Grand Jury Prize for Short Film at the Sundance Film Festival.

UPDATE: I just saw this and the other nominees for the Best Animated Short Oscar. This Hertzfeldt film was, by far, the best of the films and I sure hope it wins on February 28th.

UPDATE: This film did not win but "Bear Story" (a nice nominee) won the award.

Young child Emily is contacted by the third generation clone of herself from 220 years into the future. This Emily brings child Emily into the future and shows her the world that she will soon live in.

I have read quite a few user comments here that attempt to sum up all the themes and ideas within this short film, and mostly I think they both do it well but also do the film a huge disservice by so crudely laying it out with their words. The film plays out with a great sense of humor combined with angst, despair, beauty, hope, and death. The flat emotional tone of future Emily makes this mix work very well, and the contrast with the simple child Emily also adds to the emotional core of the piece. And this core does exist, although you would think it would struggle under so many darker ideas and themes.

The animation is at once simplistic (the Emilys are stick figures) but yet fantastic in the creativity of the world in which it occurs; everything is pretty minimalist in design but yet there is plenty of detail that makes it visually engaging and quite wonderful to watch. It is the dark gallows humor that sticks with me though, in particular the way that it is used to deliver a message about what is important in life. This short has been very successful and is very well known, so it doesn't need me to say much about it – but it is a great piece of work that is well worth seeing for how creative, intelligent, funny, moving, and entertaining it is.

If you were to watch Don Hertzfeldt's very funny and still wildly outrageous short Rejected from 2000 and go to his latest film, World of Tomorrow, you would see a monumental level of growth as a filmmaker. This isn't to say that he's moved on from having crudely-drawn characters (by design, and delightfully so as absurdly cute, absurdist what-the-f*** things), and that's part of his style. But if you go from one to another there's a level of sophistication to the presentation that has developed. This also isn't to say that Rejected isn't genius on its own level, but watching World of Tomorrow is simply mind-blowing, shot to shot, and that it presents science fiction concepts with such a dead-pan expression emotionally (the voice of the older 'clone' of Emily is just this way) while expressing such seemingly limitless imagination.

We're basically taken, from one older adult clone to her much younger counterpart from the past, into what the future will hold. There's (messy) time travel, there's the 'art' of gathering up old memories that drift along like paintings that can be put on the walls, and there's things like people being put into glass containers to be watched by people like in an exhibit throughout their lives. Oh, and there's not the internet but the OUTER-net, where people just drift along through the neural-connections and some, indeed, become lost.

This is extremely, massively heady stuff, but because of the context of it being between a little girl with notions like "I had lunch today" and "wiggle wiggle wiggle", and that this older clone has gone through a life of her own but with the sort of self-reflection that is very sad, we can relate to it. Or, at least, I could, and it just hit me on a profound level that is hard to describe after one viewing. Information is given out quickly, but nothing is too confusing if one is tapped into its peculiar, visionary science fiction head-space - there's even at one point a poem read by the older Emily about what it means to be a robot (a 'bad' poem, which is acknowledged).

The level of humor is still there for Hertzfeldt that one sees in Rejected or his Third Dimension shorts or any given work he's done. But something about World of Tomorrow is even more striking than his other work, and it may have to do with how he goes from one concept to the next, each shot and set piece with equal parts crazy veracity and almost simplistic grandeur (those shots of the "rich" people of the future uploading their consciousnesses as black boxes going out into space). This mix of incredibly complex and incredibly simple strikes the perfect balance and yet for the seemingly ridiculous angle of how the older Emily interacts with the younger Emily there's an immediate emotional bond, and even an ending that is incredibly emotional.

All I can say is if you have netflix, or a few bucks to spare on Vimeo, watch it and see if it affects you. For me, it's among the greatest short films ever made.

The premise and style of this short film is very distinctive. Don Hertzfeldt put a lot of effort into this and it shows. I loved the way Emily speaks in a genuine way and the titular world of tomorrow. There were lots of neat and funny ideas that satirise our relationship with technology.

World of Tomorrow (2015)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

Don Hertzfeldt's rather unique and original animated short deals with a young girl who is visited from the future by her third clone, which takes her into the future and show her how the world has changed in the two hundred plus years.

I'm watching this short a couple days before the Oscars are actually announced and I must admit that I'll be shocked if something beats this. Well, it's the Oscars so I guess anything is possible but this is a rather clever, original and unique little gem that manages to be rather smart throughout its 17 minute running time. The animation itself is rather laid back but I thought this approach actually worked extremely well and especially when you consider that it's the screenplay and story that is really selling the material. Both Julia Pott and Winona Mae are extremely effective with their voices and really sell the characters quite nicely.