By Sean Lawrenson, Second Year, English
I’ve been thinking of a way to best describe the new animated film, Robot Dreams, a spiralling, utterly enchanting look at what it is like to feel the deep connection of friendship. To enjoy the extreme highs and lament the devastating lows. Oh, and also, it’s set in a world where only animals and robots seemingly exist. Oh, and it’s almost completely silent, but don’t let that put you off.
The action takes place in 1980’s New York - a New York inhabited only by animals. This provides the backdrop for Dog, who goes about his life with all the passion of a blunt knife, in a rut and unable to escape his own wallowing, he stumbles upon a T.V advert for a ‘friend’. Suddenly bursting with a new found lease on life, Dog quickly orders his new B.F.F, Robot.
What follows is an irresistibly gleeful montage in which Dog and Robot explore the best New York has to offer, rollerblading around Central Park, ordering ice cream and heading on a day trip to the beach. Despite the lack of language, the music (scored by Alfonso de Villalonga) guides the film in a way language would be unable to. The standout choice simply has to be the selection of Earth, Wind and Fire’s ‘September’, a song that is able to encompass the joys of having a new friend, and from Dog’s perspective, the freedom to actually begin to live his life the way he wants.
Of course, good times cannot always last, and Robot is left unable to move after his batteries run out on the beach. This is where the film really begins. To provide context, when I went to watch the film, I was sat in a cinema with a family with two kids. I can only presume the parents had seen the poster and assumed that the film was an easy slam-dunk for a day-trip during the holidays. It is not that kind of film. After several tear-consumed outbursts, the children were swiftly led out into the foyer.
The majority of the film concerns itself with absence. A film in which language itself is at an absence has chosen to focus on what it is like to be forcibly kept away from someone you love. Alongside this are scenes of Robot stuck on this beach, completely unable to move, giving him opportunities to experience life from a catalogue of characters, sailors and metal detectorists alike, many of whom do not have his best interests at heart. Robot learns everything about humanity on that beach, whilst Dog, who had been coming more and more out of his shell, slumps back into his apathetic sense of living.
The final third of the film, from when Robot gets taken to a scrapyard onwards, is an engrossing look at starting over, rebuilding your life in the absence of your one. But whilst the film deals with certain saddening themes and scenes which (despite the film’s playful animated style) could be described as harrowing, the final message is suitably bittersweet, a reinforcement that whilst someone may be absent from your life now, time is the greatest healer, and you will always share that memory of you two listening to that one song, be it Earth, Wind and Fire’s ‘September’ or not.
What did you think of Robot Dreams?
