It was time to treat myself to another short film from Philip K Dick's Electric Dreams. This is the second to last one I have to watch, and... I've been watching them in completely random order, because non-sequential viewing of independent things should be encouraged.
This short film begins with a woman dressed in business attire driving away from a city, observing a missile going toward said city. It turns out its a dream, until it isn't. Auto Fac means "Automatic Factory". A place where goods are still manufactured even though the cities are in a monochromatic ruin of bombed building skeletons.
Autofac was set up before the war, as a sort of fail safe for humanity - only, it was focused on the wrong things. Consumer goods, toys, Christmas decorations. New stuff, year round, seasonal. A world were everything is replaceable, except the output of production.
A group of survivors struggle to get what they need - and decide to try and appeal to the reason of the Autofac. If you've ever (and you most certainly have) spend time talking to a robotic lady or man when calling a company, you should know that you cannot reason with a branching sub system of logic that has only pre-defined pathways.
It is a choose your own adventure book, as opposed to an entirely branching reality. So they take matters into their own hands, because after all, what's the good of an infinite supply of consumer goods if people do not have enough to eat?
It remains entirely uncanny how prophetic Philip K Dick's stories are. Well ahead of his time, he had predicted the notion of the dark factory, and beyond even that, he has predicted the burgeoning automation driven by demand. Just in time manufacturing, delivered to a local point, for faster logistics.
The takes are fairly high to begin with, and in typical Philip K Dick style, they escalate further. The special effects (and costumes) are fantastic, and with the help of modern film-makers quite obviously embellishing the story, it becomes more relevant in a contemporary sense - RFID, Artificial Intelligence, coolant lines for super computers that power said artificial intelligence, and more.
There's shades of post-humanism thrown into the mix of the story, with the Autofac being an autonomous machine trying to please something that which it does not understand. At the same time, there's the experience of Dick's seminal work, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? present in the later part of the film.
There is so much insight and so many questions asked about the very nature of existence in this short, less than an hour-long jaunt into what can only be described as genius - but may also be madness, meta-awareness and self discovery.
I was recently talking to some people about how I really enjoyed Caprica, and the themes it explored, the stories it approached, and I can now thoroughly see the influence that led to these things, and it all comes back to the stories of Philip K Dick.
Deception and discovery, and a story as good as you'll ever get, and of course, the question that Philip K Dick keeps asking. What is a dream and what is reality?
What a great review! I haven't seen anything from Electric Dreams, but you've made me really want to start watching it, and I think it's because of this episode. I think the premise is brilliant and super original: an automated factory that continues to produce totally useless consumer goods in a post-apocalyptic world... it's an incredible social critique.
I'll definitely make a note to watch it. Thanks for the discovery!