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It takes a lot of imagination to pre-date The Matrix by decades, but Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s long-lost and recently restored 1973 TV project does the job in style. Its showing met great acclaim at the Berlin Film Festival in February 2010.

Originally shown on German TV and now a sub-titled, two-disc set, World on a Wire follows Dr. Fred Stiller (Klaus Lowitsch), who becomes head of the Simulacron 1 project after his predecessor dies mysteriously. Stiller also finds himself looking for a colleague who suddenly disappears at a party, and whose existence is then is forgotten by virtually everyone. Before long, he finds himself suffering the same nausea attacks and headaches that dogged his predecessor before he died.

The project is based around a government-run super-computer, inhabited by ‘identity units’ that replicate society in order to predict the demand for materials, making its links to a steel corporation somewhat suspicious.

The action starts slowly by today’s standards and it is easy to spot the main plot concept by the end of the first disc, but everything speeds up significantly in the second part, as the film becomes a chase movie with a twist that makes a repeat viewing worthwhile.

Given the year it was made, Fassbinder does an impressive job of creating a futuristic world that is hard to place precisely in time. Fortunately, the film explores reality, illusion and the future without recourse to special effects that would have dated very quickly. Together with stylized direction, intense use of mirrors, and an almost drugged or zombified acting style by some of the main support actors, the viewer is given a sense of otherworldliness throughout. The keen-eared will also spot a few cryptic lines in conversations that hint at the movie’s themes.

Despite several key players having died, the bonus feature uses interviews to revisit making the film and shows a discussion about whether or not to clean up fuzz-balls during restoration work.

This should appeal to sci-fi movie fans with a sense of the genre’s history, as well as anyone with some initial patience who enjoys mystery with a philosophical twist.

Derek Walker