A Review: World of Tomorrow

World of Tomorrow is one of the best 17-minute short, animated, end-of-the-world, science fiction, films staring stick figures, you will ever watch. And I can say that with the utmost confidence. Released in 2015, World of Tomorrow was written, directed, produced, animated, and edited by Don Hertzfeldt. Other notable works of his are: The Meaning of Life, Everything will be OK, I Am So Proud of You, and It’s Such a Beautiful Life. World of Tomorrow features the voice of Julia Pott as the main character, Emily, and Hertzfeldt’s four-year-old niece Winona Mae, who plays Emily Prime. Hertzfeldt recorded Winona when she was playing, her colorful voice and spontaneous questions were used as her dialog for the film. Hertzfeldt took these recordings and edited them into the story creating her character and World of Tomorrow. It went on to win the Grand Jury Prize for Short Film’s at the Sundance Film Festival and was also nominated for Best Animated Short Film at the 2016 Academy Awards.

This film is one of a kind. It takes the rambling nonsense of a four-year-old girl and pairs it with the profound written of Don Hertzfeld, which make a truthfully hilarious and intellectually inspiring short film. The film is full of smaller stories with much larger messages, including that of David’s, a brainless clone who was left in stasis, he grew old and died as the public watched. There is also the story of Emily’s first job working on the moon as a supervisor for solar-powered robots that she programmed to fear death and darkness. These deep stories are not void of comedy ending with the point that that the robots still send depressing poetry back to earth. There are also a number of philosophical quotes that are often followed by ridiculous ones: “I am very proud of my sadness, because it means I am more alive. I no longer fall in love with rocks.” and

“This is your future, Emily Prime. It is sometimes a sad life, and it is a long life. You will feel a deep longing for something you cannot quite remember. It will be a beautiful visit, and then we shall share the same fate as the rest of the human race: dying horribly.”

The visual style that Hertzfeldt chose was quite abstract. This conceptual idea of the future helps the film feel more genuine because it allows you to focus on the concepts more than the visual futuristic society. Your thoughts don't go straight to what the future will look like but rather what the biggest problems our future generations are going to have, which is my interpretation of the point of the film really is. The art style also makes Emily more relatable, by making her look so simple it’s easier for the audience to see themselves as her. The contrasted between the simple Emily stick figures and the incredibly visually rich “outer-web” is a work of art in and of itself. It is amazing what Hertzfeldt was able to accomplish with just 2-deminations.

World of Tomorrow is full of themes about life and what living actually means. About what love is and the things we truly cherish are, like memories. There are antidotes about time like, “That is the thing about the present. You only appreciate it when it is the past.” This film will make you laugh, maybe cry, but most importantly it’ll make you think. World of Tomorrow has more depth and creates more thought in 17-minutes than most films can do in 2-hours. With that being said I will leave you with the most thought provoking and inspiring quote of the film, which are sincerely words to live by,