World of Tomorrow Episode Three: The Absent Destinations of David Prime Review
Don Hertzfeldt’s third entry to his avant-garde time travelling epic World of Tomorrow series is a love story unlike any other. For those familiar with the series up to this point, you’d know that emotions and memories are transferred through different generations of flawed clones and also to their deteriorating back up bodies in the most twisted, existential game of broken telephone ever. Although we follow several versions of Emily and David, they are both essentially two singular continuous immortal consciousnesses. It’s a world that explores extremely complicated hard sci-fi concepts laced with uncomfortable dark humour and profound philosophical epiphanies while maintaining a beautiful message of living in the moment without dwelling on the past’s what-could’ve-beens, a mantra that’s harder said than done and leads to a lot of suffering. As the previous films state, "Live well and live broadly. You are alive and living now. Now is the envy of all of the dead", "We cannot live in the past. We have to let it go". Episode three continues this idea towards a haunting addendum. "Death is not a destination. It is the absence of one." It’s the idea of pushing the envy of Now in your present to the extreme while understanding that “you only appreciate the present when it is past”.
The film follows David, the same David that would display a mindless clone of himself in the modern art museum that many others in this world, including the third generation of Emily, would visit throughout her life and form an obsession over. In episode one, she would go on to start an exhibit of anonymous memories where she falls in love with another clone of David until the day of his seemingly random death. In episode three, Hertzfeldt further adds to these moments, which in turn, sparks the big time/space dimensional assassination paradox that would tickle the fancies of any Nolan fan. It challenges the notion of star-crossed lovers and asks if love is really worth it without any hokey pokey Anne Hathaway monologues. The Absent Destinations of David Prime -a perfect title of there ever was one- also continues the idea of being with yourself. While the previous two episodes were about meeting yourself and loving you as your own best friend, episode three is about killing the version of yourself in order to have another part of you live so that you can pursue the love of others. It’s an epic odyssey inside and out and a brave step forward in sci-fi storytelling crafted by one of the greatest filmmakers of all time who just happens to draw stick figures for a living.
World of Tomorrow Episode Three is yet another masterpiece and a brilliant addition to one of the greatest film series. It’s as hard to follow as you’d expect but feels massively rewarding for those who take the time to try to understand all of its abstract ideas. It’s a series that continues to challenge storytelling conventions like nothing else.