Watch Electroma For Free

Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

A universe away from the 70's glam kitsch of Daft Punk's INTERSTELLA 5555 (of which I am also an admirer) ELECTROMA is another work which defies easy categorisation, which one will love or hate with equal fervour. It's also another set in the future. but an entirely different one to the rhythmically paced anime of the previous effort. Two robots set out to be human, amidst the expanse of a mostly uninhabited American hinterland, playing out their destinies in an entirely wordless, sometimes meditative setting. Unlike INTERSTELLA too, there is more silence here while what music there is comes from disparate sources as Brian Eno, Haydn and Allegri. As another reviewer has said : "If Stanley Kubrick, David Lynch and Jean-Luc Godard (with Francois Truffaut in a consultancy role) had been asked to collaborate on a film about androids, this is probably exactly what they would have come up with..." .. to which can be added some influences too from the futuristic sterility of such films as THX1138, as well as perhaps some of the philosophical road moves of the 70's like VANISHING POINT or TWO LANE BLACKTOP, road movies where significant travel by its definition never comes to a conclusion. This while the questioning of what exactly it means to be human is a concern familiar from the works of Philip K Dick. Entirely without dialogue, slow but strangely moving, the experience offered by ELECTROMA is ultimately just as profound as the viewer allows or wants it to be, and some have undoubtedly found it pretentious or tedious. Over its 70 minutes I found it memorable and affecting, a film which simply has to be accepted at its own pace. Without the distractions of dialogue one is forced to concentrate on issues elsewhere, with some striking images and scenes along the way - notably one of a burning robot striding to extinction through the desert, or the sad melting faces, like carnival masks, of those who seek to assume humaness. Whether or not Hero Robots 1 & 2 achieve what they want despite it all is a matter of interpretation as much as the film in which they appear. It's an experiment in its own way, just as much as the group's last was, but once again Daft Punk show just what an achievement off the wall film making offers for the adventurous, at least away from the popularist demands of Hollywood. Were that other musicians so creative on screen. Recommended.

This movie I think does a great job of showing what it is like to (in this world)find a way to express yourself. After doing a lot of after thought of this movie I came to think that is what they wanted you to see over all. The movie, which is very unconventional can be very unsettling to other people who aren't very open minded, and if you notice in the movie the hero robots were seen as the same.In my life experience i would say that if i showed this to a certain group of people i know (very closed minded) they would have a very negative response to it.There negative response would be seen as a kind of attack at the film makers, not having the ability to accept this kind of difference there minds would chase it to the end and hope that nothing like this would ever be made again because it would be seen as different.On the other hand someone as open minded as myself would look at this movie as a sort of life story, the frustration of wanting to be different and never truly fitting in and in turn ending at a point early on like so many of wanting to end there own life, never being completely able to do it them selves, either having someone else helping them "self destruct" or as the second robot did having bring themselves by creating there own destructions indirectly.Daft Punk must have noted in this story about the deaths of young artists who never felt they fit in and ending there lives young, like Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, and so many others do to there own frustration.I saw the car ride at the beginning as a kind shot to the people of hey, were cool were different were gonna change things here, and the people did nothing and ignored them almost completely as the one robot with the newspaper glanced at them then looked away. They decided they needed to change there image even more to be noticed. Then when they entered the town and felt full confident in there new appearance they seemed to be fine, and as they noticed the townspeople despise there appearance it made them feel like idiots and made them feel disgusted with themselves. After running from those who feared change, which i thought was ironic as the townspeople all seemed to be some artistically devoid town. They felt that they too were ridiculous when they finally shed there self expression in the bathroom. After which they felt as outcasts of the world, constantly walking nowhere feeling as though they were missing something, when they truly were only missing themselves which they could no longer find.After feeling that there was no hope left there only decision was that they should kill themselves because there were none like them, and that they would never be able to find themselves again. Each death is unique, the first death of the self destruction was a quick way out, an overdose maybe, or fast suicide. The other death was the fire which could be seen as anger, or even mental insanity building leading to a final death and a complete darkness.I don't know thats what i saw, I may be wrong but thats what this movie told me, you could pick at it in an ignorant way, saying director did this effect and music that, and location this, and film era that, but i think they wanted you to truly look past that and find its true meaning.

It begins like a 70's Road Movie filmed by Antonioni and it ends like Gus Van Saint's "Gerry" with robots instead of humans. "Electroma" is an experimental trip that supposedly completes Daft Punk's last album : "Human after all" like "Interstella 5555" completed "Discovery" (but the two projects, beside their experimental faces, are here merely link one with another, whereas the last movie had strong connections with the album and the video clips). Here's a few things to know before watching this movie if you don't want to be too surprise or disappointed : it has absolutely no dialogs in it, the story is linear and simple and allows long experimental and contemplative sequences and the soundtrack isn't made by Daft Punk (even if it's omnipresent and very good : Brian Eno, Sebastien Tellier, Gregory Allegri...).The movie is clearly divided in three parts, each lasts approximately 20 minutes long, except the desert part, which may be a little bit longer (but that may be a subjective impression...)SUBJECTIVE DESCRIPTION OF THE MOVIE. The first part is a road movie, with a video clip's editing style, where you see the two Daft Punk Robots traveling across the California desert. The references of the musicians are clearly shown here : the movie effectually looks like a crossover between "2001, a space Odyssey" and "Easy Rider", with robots in a big black car. The scene is rather pleasant, very aesthetically, and seems like a long and beautiful video clip d'auteur or like a 70's art video.The second part is a mix between "THX 1138" and a grotesque horror movie, with the Daft Punk arriving in a typically American city full of robots, where they experience a operation, that transforms them to human, after all. They come out of the laboratory with caricature faces, and walk through the city, where the other robots stare at them with their surprised artificial eyes. But their carnival figures melt like ice-cream in the sun, and they have to get ride of them rather rapidly, and to become the Daft Punk again. The last part fallows the two robots in the desert, where they walk and walk, and walk again (they're robots, they're never tired or hungry, they can walk endlessly...). There's then this secession of desert's frames, finishing with Courbet's "L'Origine du monde", that is rather ridiculous, but wakes the spectator up (I have to say that the movie is released in one Theatre in Paris, and has a unique weekly projection the Saturday at midnight !). SPOILER AHEAD (even if it's merely a narrative movie).Then, the two robots get tired of walking and even of living a robot's life : one explodes in a "Zabriskie Point"'s style, the other becomes the Human Torch (or the Robot Torch). END OF TELLING THE END OF THE MOVIE.The all thing is a pleasant but rather unoriginal (too many references) experimental movie, that links video clip with artistically experience and cinema.

I think there is a lot to be said about experimental film. I saw the film on the beach at Cannes, and for all I know, the guys could have been sitting next to me. In a search for a human existence, two robots wander somewhat endlessly until they finally find a way to end it all. The film is making a remarkable statement on today's world. It raises so many great questions, and the only problem is that sitting through two hours of wandering characters takes an audiences expectations to another level. Fellini was able to allow his characters to roam, but in that wandering so much happened, and his characters were intellectually credible. In the case of Electroma, the lack of events is very anti-film. Everything which they have done with this film leaves the audience questioning, why? We love films because of what happens in them, not because of what doesn't happen. I think that Daft Punk's attempt to find something else in this medium is quite brilliant, yet it falls short of entertainment. The visual means in which they reached certain points was incredible, but finding a way through the monotony was difficult for some. The ending was fantastic though, and I wish they push the limits even more in their next take on film.We are all robots who sculpt our own plastic faces. We are all wandering robots with no place to fit in. Maybe I am analyzing too much, but to go to such realms with out symbolism in some higher meaning would be a waste. Perhaps that is what they were out to do. Perhaps they were just creating a (beautiful) moving painting. Maybe just messing with our heads. Regardless, they were up to something, and we will just have to see what comes next to see whether or not they're full of it.I do give them credit for the silence. It spoke louder than any music they've ever written.