Len Lye's The Birth of the Robot is a weird, oily fever dream

Is it worth your time?

If you like your cinema to feel like a fever dream from 1936, yes. If you need a plot that makes sense or characters you can actually relate to, you are going to hate this.

It’s barely a movie. It’s more like a weird, beautiful experiment that someone found in a dusty attic. Len Lye clearly wasn't interested in making a normal film.

The whole thing starts with this oil shower. It’s supposed to be life-giving, I guess? But it looks more like a mechanical baptism. Watching these cars get revived by thick, black liquid is somehow both gross and satisfying.

The rhythm is erratic. It doesn't follow the rules of a movie like If I Were King or anything else from that era. It just does its own thing.

Odd little observations:

• The way the creatures move is genuinely unsettling. They have this jerky, stop-motion vibe that makes my skin crawl a bit.
• The music is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Without that weird soundtrack, this would just be a silent, confusing mess.
• One of the car shapes looks like it’s struggling to stand up. It’s weirdly sympathetic.

I found myself wondering if this influenced those old industrial films. You know, the ones they showed in schools to scare us about the future? This feels like the avant-garde grandfather of all that.

It’s short. Thank god for that. Any longer and I think I might have started hallucinating oil myself. 🤖

It’s not trying to be prestigious. It’s just trying to be strange. And honestly? It succeeds at that better than most big-budget stuff I’ve seen lately.

Don't look for a deep meaning here. There isn't one. Just watch the oil fall and enjoy the mess.