Synopsis
From the labyrinth subway of Buenos Aires, a train disappears with some 30 passengers aboard. The authorities concerned asks topographer Daniel Pratt to help locate the missing. He looks for the design map of the subway line but it is not at the Archives Center. There he only finds some hints of his former teacher Dr. Mistein who designed the subway. Daniel visits the doctor's place but it is empty. While rummaging through the empty apartment house with the help of a neighborhood girl, he discovers the map on which riddle-like words are written. Daniel goes underground and inspects the subway tracks. The disappeared train does not show its body but its existence is felt. At last, Daniel explains the incident by using the theory of Moebius but all officials of the subway corporation, including the president, ignore him. He keeps on inspecting and incidentally gets on a train only to find it to be the missing one. He advances through each coach and finally meets the driver who turns out to be Dr. Mistein. When a person living in a two-dimensional world is confined to the strap of Moebius, he can't get out of it because there is no end. But isn't it true that we in the three-dimensional world is also locked up somewhere? "Moebius" subway has a station named Borgese. This film is based on a novel of A.J. Deutsch but is soaked in dreamy and fantastic mood, a trademark feature of Latin American literature. Speed is the decisive factor that causes such a mood. The subway runs so fast that the passengers can't keep their heads straight. However, the stations by which the train runs are all the same and no one can tell when this trip will come to an end. Produced on the threshold of the 21st century, this film presents a portrait of our own who are running on the strap of Moebius at the speed of "modern civilization." It can also serve as a text for meditation for the turn of the century. Since the "Man Facing Southeast" by Eliseo Subiela shown in 1987, it is the first time that Argentina has successfully produced a high quality science fiction movie which is extremely difficult to make with low budget. The two works commonly express alienation of human beings, particularly the problem of communication, against the setting of a science fiction. Mutually complementing, the two movies take out a vision for civilization which is unique to science fiction. A co-work by the graduating class at the University of Cinema of Buenos Aires, "Moebius" will serve as a wonderful model and a stimulant for Korean youths dreaming of making science fictions and fantasies. (Park Sang-joon)