World of Tomorrow Episode Three: The Absent Destinations of David Prime

[Ezee E]

WIKI

[Ezee E]

A philosophy class mixed with time travel.

It's been a while since I've any Hertzfeldt. His outlook may be a bit pessimistic, but the creativity is up there with the Lynch's/Kubrick's as far as I'm concerned.

[Ezee E]

With the lack of movies this year, this may be one of the times I have an exception of putting in a short film (granted it's 34 mins) into my tops of the year.

[Philip J. Fry]

[Philip J. Fry]

[Ezee E]

Count me in!

[Peng]

This greatly missed Winona Mae's Emily Prime, but it might as well be for the best, since even if this is imo the least of the three shorts so far, to rely on her would greatly risk diminishing returns. Episode Two sidesteps that by mostly function as an extension into the Emilys' collective psyches that include Mae's Emily, but it would be hard to avoid feeling repetitive here if she's among the main players again. Instead, Hertzfeldt switches to grand world-building, his frames dense with satirical future details and increasingly elaborate (and often horrific) time-travel loops that also tie back to earlier episodes.

There's nothing as affecting as the contrast of young Emily Prime with the new dystopian world around her like in first two episodes, but David's struggle through time-travel clues to find something of hope to hold on to has its own stinging poignancy. And by the last scene -- not sure if I read correctly that it means to be ambiguous, to be read in two ways depending on your worldview -- this episode manages to carve out its own strain of creative Hertzfeldtian heartbreak yet again. 8/10