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.
