Sileo

Sileo is an eight-minute short film animation from Hungarian writer and director, Demeter Lorant. The animation centres around a possible future in which AI is in control of the world, with Lorant previously saying that the main thrust of the story grew from a contemplation of the Ship of Theseus thought experiment from philosophy. In the Ship of Theseus story each part of the ship gets replaced over time until eventually there is no longer any of the original pieces still making up its frame. In this instance we then have to ask if it is still the same ship as the one which was initially built or if it is now something else entirely?

In Sileo, Lorant transposes this thought onto his main character GEFF-325520-BD, an AI robot whose main job is to fix broken units and get them back up and running again. This particular GEFF model is very good at its job and believes it has purpose while it fixes the units it is given, however, as time goes on and more and more units get repaired, GEFF’s own parts start to wear down and break, with them needing replaced, too. Over time GEFF has most of its parts replaced and it starts to wonder if it really is the same robot that it started life as, or if now it should think of itself as something totally different. This leads GEFF to go on a journey to find its own creator, and to ask it questions about the nature of existence.

As GEFF goes about its travels it passes through an eerily empty cityscape, with beautiful clean lines and futuristic street furniture. There are no humans to be found, in fact there’s not much of anything at all, but GEFF does pass by a tree and some ants, and it sees a flock of birds flying high in the sky, which are later found to be only replicas to give the impression of life still existing. Once GEFF reaches its creator there are new secrets to be told and it has to face up to whether it can outgrow its programming to become something more.

The whole look and feel of Sileo is one of soulless machination. Each of the GEFF robots is necessarily an exact replica of the others and so there’s a lot of repetition and very little differentiation between the animated models. The buildings, too, have a soulless edge to them with the future feeling like an empty and desolate place. The animation therefore sticks mostly to blocky models and straight lines, which while not being overstimulating to look at, manages to get the feel of a robot future pretty spot on. The narration from Nate Goodwyn, too, keeps the audience at a certain distance while telling the story, with very little emotion seeping through from his voice to embody the character of GEFF. Everything is clinical and objective as it is shown, and you get the feeling that the story is being given to you rather than being expressed on screen.

In saying that, there will be some of us who still feel that they want to identify with GEFF and to empathise with this little robot in the same way we did with Wall-E (2008) or Johnny Five (Short Circuit 1986), and even though it is possible it is likely to take an awful lot more effort due to the one-note characterisation that exists throughout Sileo.

In the end, Sileo is a marked achievement for Lorant who wrote, directed, animated and soundscaped the short all by himself. The philosophical themes are interesting and keep the audience engaged throughout the runtime, while the animation works well for the story it is telling. There’s not a lot that truly stands Sileo out as an animated tale, but what it does it does well, and it at least manages to get us to think a little bit about the future we may be creating for ourselves, or for those who we leave behind after we’re gone.