World of Tomorrow (2015)

Small 'World': A scene from "World of Tomorrow,"
an Academy Award nominee for best short film.

During the Oscars broadcast, the award for best short subject has for years gone neglected or ignored by audiences. It's because of their obscure nature and limited accessibility, many of these one- and two-reel gems go unseen. Not anymore, thanks to the online age of streaming services.

Vimeo and Netflix have rescued at least one title from the shadows, offering “World of Tomorrow”—a wondrous 16-minute, digitally animated short written and directed by Don Hertzfeldt—that is among this year’s nominees.

In the movie, a young girl named Emily Prime (voiced by Winona Mae) answers a frantic series of beeps and buzzes on a computer and opens up a video call. Appearing on screen is another version of her, named Emily Clone (Julia Pott), older and wiser, calling from 227 years in the future. Emily Prime is eventually beamed into Emily Clone’s world, where her future self acts as a kind of tour guide.

Part of this imaginative future features endlessly shuffling, “Metropolis”-like robots working on the moon; strange love stories involving rocks, fuel pumps and a cute alien named Simon; a magical place called the Outernet, perhaps meant as an Internet metaphor, where lonely people often get lost; and a harbinger of doom linked to a destructive meteor.

During the journey, encouraging aphorisms are dispensed, such as living life broadly, not wasting time on meaningless trivialities, and remembering to enjoy life’s precious little moments. “The thing about the present,” future Emily warns, “is that it’s only appreciated in the past.”

Echoes of Hertzfeldt’s short film anthology “It’s Such a Beautiful Day”—an astonishing, hilarious and touching slice of surreal existentialism made in 2012—ring throughout, although “World of Tomorrow” doesn’t quite live up to that film’s level of brilliant originality.

Instead, it suggests a kind of dark, science fiction parable mixed with lighthearted comedy.  “World of Tomorrow” is sometimes didactic, inscrutable and gloomy, but it’s also inventive, endearing and funny. Drawn as quaint stick-figures, the characters and animation style have a charming look that dispels heavier, more profound themes of life and death with childlike innocence.

Long a prolific purveyor of short films, Hertzfeldt’s effusive visions still pack more content into a compact running time than many full-length features. Now that the award for best short subject is no longer just an occasion to run to the fridge for a snack, “World of Tomorrow” certainly deserves a look.