World on a Wire

‘World on a Wire’ was the first, last and only foray into speculative science fiction for New Wave maestro Rainer Werner Fassbinder. The result is an opulent and elaborate epic – though it was first shown as a three-part TV serial which plays like ‘Chinatown’, if that film’s hero Jake Gittes had traded his cream linen suit for a bank of old-school computers and a sparkly crash helmet. Loosely adapted from Daniel F Galouye’s 1964 pulp sci-fi novella, ‘Simulacron-3’, this staggering work (which triumphantly resurfaced in 2010 after years in the distribution doldrums) prefigures pretty much any film that deals with the concept of concentric realities ('Inception', ‘Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace’ et al), and does so with economy, rigour and style. So, so much style.