Robot Dreams: Animation about Unlikely BFFs Explores Connection, Tenderness, Resilience
By Karen Gordon
Rating: A
Every movie is a leap of faith.
You can have the greatest director and screenwriter and then cast the most respected actor of her generation in the lead, and the result is still not guaranteed. So, I find it especially wonderful when a movie that sounds odd on paper blooms on the screen into a supremely touching and joyful way.
Such is Robot Dreams, an animated film with no dialogue about a dog and a robot. It’s a wistful, beautiful, and tender movie that works across generations, yet another feat accomplished. It's not just clever storytelling, dammit! There’s heart and magic at work here.
The film — directed by Spain’s Pablo Berger and based on a 2007 comic book by Sara Varon (Dog’s last name is Varon) — debuted at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, played at the Toronto International Film Festival among others, and was nominated for an Oscar. It has won several awards, including best animated film by the Toronto Film Critics Association. (Read our interview with Pablo Berger).
The film is set in the East Village in a 1980s-era Manhattan populated by anthropomorphic animals. Dog lives alone in a tidy little apartment but recognizes he is lonely. Inspired by a TV ad, he orders a robot companion and carefully assembles him.
The two hit it off. Dog takes Robot around and shows him his favourite spots in his city. The two become good friends, and very happy. We watch them dance joyfully to “September” by Earth Wind & Fire, which becomes their song.
At the end of the summer, Dog takes Robot to the crowded beach where they walk along the boardwalk, frolic in the water, and then fall asleep on their blankets in the sand. When they wake up late to a deserted beach and prepare to go home, they discover that Robot has rusted in place and can’t move.
Dog can’t lift him, so he heads home alone. The next morning, he picks up his toolbox, hits the hardware store to get what he needs and goes back to the beach. But there’s a big problem. The city has closed the beach down for the summer and Dog’s attempts to break in are stymied by security. Permission to get in legally fails.
He now must wait until the beach reopens on June 1. Now they both have to spend the long fall, winter, and spring months alone, pining for each other, with Dog watching the world go by from his neat little apartment as Robot lies on the beach, stuck in place. Both dream, sometimes with anxiety, about the other.
For each of them, there are good days and bad ones. Their encounters are sometimes sweet and sometimes disappointing, even heartbreaking. Life is not always kind.
This is such a simple movie, easy to watch, appropriate across a range of ages, so how does it lead to such a deeply felt emotional film? Spare as it is, it is never dull, with little visual grace notes along the way that are delightful. Theres’s magic here in Berger’s telling of the story. How does an animated dog taking the hand of a robot evoke such farklempt feelings in the viewer?
In the end, Robot Dreams is a lovely story about so many things: the yearning for connection, and the joys of love, friendship, and resilience.
Most of all it’s a movie of such sublime tenderness that it’s a little salve for the spirit.
Robot Dreams. Written and directed by Pablo Berger. In theatres June 7.