(courtesy IMP Awards)
Humanity is anchored and defined by its relationships.
While romantic love steals much of the showy, relationally performative limelight, it is friendship that often sustains us and endures long beyond the flashy pop and fizz of eros, giving us a sure point of return in the chaotic rough-and-tumble of life, a safe harbour of acceptance and support and an unconditionality that evades us elsewhere.
It also makes us feel considerably less alone, giving life a beautiful, emotionally resonant shared quality that elevates pretty much everything we see and do, and it’s this particular aspect, though the others are hardly absent that is most to the fore in Robot Dreams, an exquisitely lovely and deeply affecting animated feature film based on the graphic novel of the same name by Sara Varon.
Written and directed by Patrick Berger, the dialogue-free Robot Dreams packs a considerable amount of emotional punch in its beguilingly understated narrative which begins with a very lonely Dog sitting in his apartment in 1980s New York eating yet another mac-and-cheese, as alone as it’s possible for anyone to get.
Responding to an ad for a robot companion on his TV in what is clearly an alternate multiversal , anthropomorphically animalistic version of our robotically-diminished reality, Dog orders Robot, assembles him and finds at last someone to share his life with.
In short order, they explore the many wonders and delights of Manhattan in summer, from rollerskating in Central Park to eating hotdogs, seeing the sights from atop the Empire State Building.
It’s an idyllic, carefree existence, all set to the music of Earth Wind and Fire’s “September” which emerges again and again through the film leitmotif, linking the many stages of this transformative friendship, and it redefines life for Dog but also helps Robot, newly awake and alive fresh from the box, what it means to be alive.
It is, quite simply, a delight watching these two new friends experience the best of life together in a montage that acts as much as a homage to the power and wonder of friendship as a love letter to New York City itself which is reproduced and brought to life in vivaciously wondrously detail.
Of course life being life, the good times can’t roll on forever, and after a fun-filled day on Ocean Beach, Robot finds himself unable to move, his joints seized by too much exposure to the salty air and water.
Dog is heartbroken when he’s unable to move his very heavy friend and has to leave him on the beach, lying prostrate on a towel, vowing to return the next morning, repair kit books and a toolbox in hand, to fix him and take him home.
Unknown to Dog though their bucolic day in the seaside sun was it for the season and the beach is locked up until June the next year; each and every attempt by Dog to desperately reach his beloved friend is thwarted by chain link fences and security guards with extreme prejudice, leaving the two friends separated by time and circumstance in the cruellest of ways.
This is perhaps the toughest and most-heartrending moment of Robot Dreams whose depiction of the height, depth and breadth and sustaining power of friendship is all the richer because it shows us the highs and the lows of connection, of how the very best of times can become the very worst on one fateful days.
Yes, of course, it’s near-to-impossible not to feel your heart break at this point and feel the tears fall, but Robot Dreams, for its sadness over much of its 100-minute runtime also celebrates how impelling the need to restore lost connection can be and how even in our dreaming moments, especially for Robot, it can be all-consuming.
It’s during these imagined reunions, which must be left to the watching of the film because they are precious and gorgeously and movingly animated, that the power of friendship to renew and change us is on full display, as is the energetic need to restore that connection that shaped us and makes us better than we’d otherwise be.
The sheer joy of Robot Dreams, which as noted has more than its fair share of tender, heartfelt moments too, is how it shows how much change is brought about in the lives of Dog and Robot because they know, and knew, each other.
Friendship isn’t just a point in time thing, and while many sadly end for a whole host of reasons, they always leave a lasting legacy with us, leaving us so much better off than if they had never happened at all.
In many charmingly and affectingly animated scenes in Robot Dreams we see how these two characters are forever changed for the better, and how the friendship they build emboldens them to go on and do all kinds of things and take chances they might otherwise not have taken.
Life is far from easy or straightforward and we see that in the film in ways that break the heart over and over, but because that friendship was there, because it existed at all, we are transformed to make life richer, better and far more wonderful.
And honestly while you always hope that every friendship will last until the end of our lives, the truth is that whether they do or not, and Robot Dreams emphatically brings this to wholly moving and quirkily warm life, they have changed us and given us memories and made this hard business of being alive so much better.
We need connection and we need people in our corner who champion and love us and who we can champion in return, but more importantly perhaps, we need the companionship and shared experience that friendship brings us, and in Robot Dreams that point is made is ways so breathtakingly beautiful and moving, bolstered by detailed animation that is colourfully alive with hope, truth and honesty, that you will treasure all the friendships you are privileged to have all over again and you’ll feel like rushing out to give all your friends a hug and tell them how much they matter and mean to you.