So I opened this one up in Hulu, and… 28 minutes? Okay, wait, is this a clip instead of the full movie? Checking reveals: Nope! This is in fact a 28 minute short film. It feels like cheating to count it, but then again, I guess it’ll offset one of the handful of 5-9 hour movies I’ve watched…

Beyond the length, it’s also notable that to a real extent this isn’t a movie at all. It’s shot almost entirely with still pictures over which a narrator tells the story — it would be possible without too much adaptation to re-release it in a picture-book format, although that would lose some of the dynamism of the editing.

That technique was driven by budget needs (the director couldn’t afford a motion camera and the film for it), but it actually works really well with the content, which is a kind of fable-like work of science fiction — it starts on the eve of World War III, and involves time travel, and I won’t say more than that about the story. It’s lyrical and dream-like in tone; it’s maybe what you’d imagine a film adaptation of a Samuel Delany story would be like. (That’s probably not a perfect analogy, but I can’t think of a better one.)

So as I’ve gone through these movies, a pretty common conclusion I’ve ended with is something along the lines of “I can’t exactly recommend this, but I really liked it and think it’s excellent.” Well, this one’s different: This one I can recommend, to you specifically. This is absolutely and 100% a movie that anyone who is interested in SF should watch (really: should have watched — how have I never seen this already decades ago?). It is not only enormously influential, it’s excellent in its own right. (Plus, geez, it’s 28 minutes, so it’s not like you’re giving up a big chunk of your life if you don’t like it.)