A plethora of animated films are released yearly, and their aims are often rudimental entertainment, intending to trigger childlike wonder. Films such as the DESPICABLE ME franchise are harmless distractions for children, but they often don’t aim high or suitably enrich on an emotional or intellectual level. Children and adults who watch animated films deserve the chance to experience a film rich with maturity, one that treats them with the respect they deserve and teaches them about the human condition. The remarkably rendered ROBOT DREAMS is such a film.
Based on Sara Varon’s graphic novel, Pablo Berger’s dialogue-free 2D animation ROBOT DREAMS is disarmingly simple on its surface: a dog wants a friend. It is with this simplicity that Berger challenges the audience to look inward. Emerging from this whimsical film about friendship is an important teaching on the necessity of having experienced relationships, dissecting the human experience through an anthropomorphic metaphor.
Dog sits in his spacious apartment in a zootropolistic version of 1980s Manhattan, New York. The viridescent couch hosting him is too big, the solo mac and cheese TV dinner he makes is meagre, and the programs he watches on television are boring. Dog, for all his cute creature comforts, is lonely, a feeling so vividly captured by Berger in ROBOT DREAMS that it tears down your mental shields and summons up that despair from shadowy depths of depression. The loneliness shown isn’t sexual nor romantic, but in the desperate desire for human (or, in this metaphorical case, canine) connection that a grand city like New York elicits (the kind of city that swallows you whole if you’re not careful). The affable Dog seemingly has none of these connections. Those who have suffered from depression may recognise the symptoms as the subtext rings like alarm bells: Dog is in danger of that loneliness gripping his depressive despair tight enough that he may not be there tomorrow.
“Where adults who have experienced or observed depression may recognise how serious the despair can be, Berger is astute enough to know that the experience of loneliness and depression is universal and felt by adults and children alike.”
Parents worried about the film showing a subject like this in any graphic detail can sigh relief, as this is all subtext. ROBOT DREAMS is a delightful breath of fresh air, a film that teaches the sorrow one feels is a fleeting evocation. Where adults who have experienced or observed depression may recognise how serious the despair can be, Berger is astute enough to know that the experience of loneliness and depression is universal and felt by adults and children alike. It is never exhortative; instead, it presents it as a melancholic facet of Dog’s life. It is Dog’s decision to combat this feeling. He orders a robot – a metaphor for a generation’s amicable co-existence with technology – to accompany him on life’s journey. It is here where we get the genesis for ROBOT DREAMS’ plot.
Their mutual friendship (it should be noted that Berger doesn’t engage with the power dynamic involved with ‘buying’ a friend) blossoms throughout one summer to the literal tune of the Earth, Wind and Fire’s ‘September’ while their roller skating excursions and visits to Central Park are plentiful in saccharine flourishes. But as the serotonin of a summer kinship ends, so does their time together. In his distracted pleasure, Dog neglects the needs of Robot, and the battery of the technological marvel runs out while they’re on the beach.
To Dog’s dismay, the beach closes that evening for the season, and he can not retrieve his new best friend from their sandy confinement. After failing to save Robot through bureaucratic methods, Dog resigns to marking his calendar for next summer and the eventual reunion with his mechanical mate, should anything remain. As the months pass, Robot lies there as a flaccid piece of sentient metal and begins to dream. What is lucid reality and what is a hazy nightmare from an awful situation become intertwined as Robot lies paralytic against the elements. ROBOT DREAMS subjects Robot to these harrowing events, but it’s not shocking in a way that upsets, nor is it something that kids cannot comprehend. Berger presents big topics in a way that children will empathise with and comprehend, finely dancing along that thin, tricky line. Berger talks to children on their level rather than sneering and looking down. The joy of ROBOT DREAMS is that it is the exact kind of universally appealing entertainment that has made a show like Bluey such a cult hit among parents and kids alike. While laden with gags and film references that adults grasp, it’s never alienating one faction of its audience by doing so.
“Berger presents big topics in a way that children will empathise with and comprehend, finely dancing along that thin, tricky line. Berger talks to children on their level rather than sneering and looking down.”
ROBOT DREAMS could have stopped at fifteen minutes and been a gorgeous short film. Dog has a friend! He’s no longer lonely and his purpose in life is reinvigorated. But Berger has more ambitious aspirations in how he wants to interrogate the permeation of loneliness and depression. The stunning opening sequence of Robot and Dog together in Central Park and their respective journeys throughout seasonal changes facilitate the idea that the isolation one feels after strong emotional bonds will be short-lived. The memories one creates, and the growth we receive through having experienced these connections are intrinsic to our self-concept. Their friendship has such strength that the introduction of an autumnal love interest for Dog is only an ephemeral entity designed to bring a temporary sense of satisfaction to the hole Robot leaves.
Berger animates ROBOT DREAMS like an expressionistic mosaic, the artistry painting a mural of tender profundity. A 2D rendering of how transient life is, it is set to a charming percussive score that wags alongside Robot and Dog’s journeys. The emotional through-line about how our relationships affect each other’s lives is similar to Celine Song’s splendid PAST LIVES. It works as a beautiful, affirming rendition of the importance of connections and that the pain and love we receive from those are a fundamental cornerstone in emotional and psychological growth. That the film achieves pathos of this magnitude without dialogue while being a visual and witty delight is a miraculous achievement.