Easily the least seen of this year’s nominees for the Academy Award for Best Animated Film, Robot Dreams, the wordless Spanish film based on Sara Varon’s children’s graphic novel of the same name, has now received a limited release in the UK and Australia. Directed by Pablo Berger, the movie takes place in 1980s New York, and follows a lonely Dog who buys a Robot to be his best friend. The two become incredibly close, until disaster strikes during a trip to the beach, forcing Dog to abandon the energy-depleted Robot. As Dog waits for the beach to reopen the following summer, Robot dreams of escaping as he lies immobile by the shore.
It’s an incredibly beautiful little gem of a film, with a deceptively simple plot and art direction, that will likely reward multiple viewings. True to its nature, it says so much with so little: without trying to give too much away, it is about loneliness, loss, grief, hope, and moving forward in life, and explores it in a way that’ll leave you weeping tears of joy, or grinning from ear to ear by the time the credits roll, ready to take on the world’s challenges with a renewed zeal for life, love, and relationships. It is immensely relatable, and a huge reason is how interpretable Dog and Robot’s love is: is it purely platonic? Romantic? The answer’s irrelevant, and the film is all the more stronger for it.
Something that’s refreshing about the movie is how it’s not particularly plot-centric compared to other animated films: that’s an understandable characteristic of many of them, because animation is so expensive and time-consuming, but Robot Dreams is content to wallow in the various misadventures and dreams the characters gets up to while simply waiting, instead of having every beat tie together and eventually pay off. This is the kind of film where a character can spend time wandering into an elaborate 1930s-style chorus line, and it doesn’t feel incredibly out-of-place.
Likewise, it’s incredibly charming how there’s very little internal logic to its universe: this is a world that resembles 1980s New York exactly, even though it’s populated by animals who can’t talk, plus “normal” animals, and robots who do look human, right down to their ability to consume organic food. It’s not until now that I’ve realized the inconsistency with how Dog and Robot both bond over Earth, Wind & Fire, even though (again) no one communicates verbally in this world, a few odd words and some whistling aside – it really speaks (no pun intended) to just how winningly childlike and delightful the whole project is.
Speaking of children, I can’t say for sure for if a child would love Robot Dreams as much as this adult (they’re not a monolith, for one), but what I will share is that a distraction-free environment like the theater is truly the best place to experience Robot Dreams, as it’ll allow its long (102-minute), quiet story to affect them, instead of causing them to get restless. Secondly, I have never wanted to hear a child’s thoughts on an ending and their takeaway from it more than I have with this film: as I said earlier, it’s a story about loss and how we deal with it, which are absolutely themes you should unpack with them. I wouldn’t say Robot Dreams has an unhappy ending, far from it, but it’s certainly different from what they might be used to.
The movie is also a great introduction to Earth, Wind & Fire for the little ones: I’m an adult, but I can’t hear “September” now without thinking of Dog and Robot, so god only knows what kind of attachment their story will cause kids to form with that beautiful, and incredibly open and emotional era of music. Like disco, or New York’s LGBTQ+ culture in the ’80s, Robot Dreams is a reflection of a need for connection between humans (which is funny, given there are no humans in the film), especially among lonely and quiet people, but it’s warm, funny, and heartfelt enough that it should move and inspire anyone watching.
Robot Dreams will reportedly bow in the US on May 31 – bring tissues!
