World on a Wire (Rainer Werner Fassbender, 1973)

8/10
Rainer Werner Fassbender directed this two-part sci-fi TV movie. It totals more than 3 1/2 hours in length but it really doesn't feel that long at all. Made in 1973, it prefigures some of what would come later in The Matrix and Avatar, but its central conceit (a scientist in charge of a "supercomputer"that replicates society 20 years in the future begins to question his own reality and sanity in turn) could have come from any number of Twilight Zone episodes preceding it. Its most attractive feature is the outlandish set designs, in the "futuristic as seen through the 70's" mode of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Solaris. It drags a bit in the second half but overall it's pretty entertaining if not exactly enlightening.