Androids Dream Film Difficulty Ranking: 4
How would Bladerunner have looked if it had a minutely small budget?
Like Androids Dream.
From: Spain, Europe
Watch: Trailer, Mubi
Next: Bladerunner, High Rise, Logan's Run
Why Watch Androids Dream?
- You want to get inspired to make your own sci-fi movie! This one proves you don’t need loads of money for special effects.
- Sheep! (that’s for all you Philip K. Dick fans).
- You’ve been to a Mediterranean seaside resort in the height of summer.
- For a strange, budget version of Bladerunner.
The Breakdown
It is 2054, the slow alternation between shots of a city establish that there is no life here. Slowly the shots approach one of the many derelict skyscrapers, entering it’s empty, unfurnished shell. Blotches of old plaster show on the walls, pockmarked by electric sockets.
A man runs through a shot. Another chases after him. The victim has nowhere to run to. The chaser guns him down, shooting his victim in the back as he runs away.
The setting of this film is a vacant Benidorm. A holiday resort packed by mostly British tourists in the summer months, appearing as a perfect alternative to the grim, gloomy Los Angeles of Bladerunner. A city built for summer life, in this film, Benidorm is empty. The long establishing shots, alternating between different views of the city add to the film’s eerie feel.
The director breaks up the protagonists pursuit of humans with scenes full of shots of middle-aged and elderly couples. These scenes, such as a scene made up of almost 5 minutes of watching elderly couples dancing in a bar, help build up the oddball humor of the film. The fake sheep also contributes to the irony!
Most of all, the tone of the film is set by the editing. The film plays like the slide-shows you may have seen before home computers took off. The kind you put up a white sheet or picked a wall with the fewest blotches and projected slides up onto at family events. Each shot in this film appears without much variation from the one which preceded it. The camera never moves, and most of the shots feature still life. I felt like this editing added to the irony of the film. The dead-on shots emphasize the absurdities of the banal characters within their strange environments. For example, if the scene of the elderly couples dancing featured many shots in the scene, alternating between close-ups of particular couples, and moving round the room with the music, we may be swayed along with the editing without much thought. However, using the same still shot of the elderly couples on the dance floor forces us to see the absurdity of the scene – why are we watching some old people dancing??
What to Watch Next
This film and Bladerunner both adapted Philip K. Dick’s novel ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.’ Both created a completely different tone. Bladerunner‘s tone was made with the sci-fi effects, dark Los Angeles, and dialogue. In contrast, this film ingeniously uses shot framing, editing, and the empty Benidorm to create a tone full of irony. Both are worth watching.
You could also check out High Rise for a similar urban setting with more action, and Logan’s Run for another sci-fi film with a similar look.
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