What keeps Robot Dreams fresh and appealing is the loneliness that punctuates both characters’ lives when they are separated, especially given how short their time together was. Just as the film has a longer runtime in showing them apart than together, that mirrors the timespans of their moments of connection and separation. It’s not just Dog and Robot’s despondence that makes this so saddening, but that they are forced into recontextualizing the other being into a dream-like envisioning, where they doubt whether their love was truly requited.
