eXistenZ (1999)
100 best Science Fiction films
Popular Mechanics list
#88. eXistenZ (1999)
Ted Pikul: “Free will, obviously, isn’t a big
factor in this little world of ours.”
Allegra Geller: “It’s like in real life, there’s just
enough [free will] to make it interesting.”
As the last century drew to a close there
were fewer End-of-the-World SF films than you’d except, but 1999 did provide a
remarkable bumper-crop of SF that embraced Virtual Reality (VR), an essential
Cyberpunk theme that in Cinema is generally challenged the idea that Objective Reality
even exist, or if it does, it’s not as important as you have been led to assume.
“eXistenZ” wasn’t the most popular of these, but it was easily the most
sophisticated. The only one that came close to its sophistication was “Open
Your Eyes,” which was actually two years old already, but it wasn’t until 1999 that
it got its release in the USA. The year’s big winner was “The Matrix” whose remarkable FX and Fight Choreography
transformed Hollywood. Then there was “The Thirteenth Floor,” the second
adaptation on a then-more-than-three-decades old novel (Daniel F.
Galouye’s “Simulacron-3”
(1964)). There was also “Harsh Realm,” was a short-lived TV series. Additionally,
there was the obscure “Dreamtrips,” a love story unfolding inside the human
subconscious and a computer. The cheesiest of them all, “Apocalypse II:
Revelation” which was the
only one that addressed the Biblical End Times by having an Anti-Christ figure
handing out VR headsets (it was the second part of a four-film series of
Millennial Thrillers that started in 1998). I should also throw in wholly
bizarre, notably tech-less, and maybe not even SF, “Being John Malkovich,” which
played with ideas of entering different realities and what that means to have personal
identity.
A notable thing
about most of these films, but not “eXistenZ,” is they pursued an extremely
slick, stylish, up-to-date look (the lower-budget outings didn’t succeed, but most
still tried). Meanwhile, “eXistenZ,” from the always
idiosyncratic Writer/Director David Cronenberg, deliberately made much of this $15-million-dollar-outing
look cheaper than it was, and in some ways, decades older.
This oldish-look,
imitating Cronenberg’s own low-budget films from the 1970s, was a rebellion
against the then-stylish Punk- and/or Retro-Futuristic look that had dominated
SF film-making since the 1980s. Cronenberg explains, "Most people who come
to a sci-fi movie about Game playing will have certain expectations. I want to
derail those expectations, because if you're on those rails, you're going to
come out at the station in the same old place. ‘Blade Runner’ [1982] was
disturbing the first time, but now it's kind of comfortable; it feels cozy. So,
I don't want the audience to get too comfortable. Not only do I not have the ‘Blade
Runner’ city, I have no city, and there are no computers, no television
screens, no running shoes, no mirrors, clocks, watches, jewelry. I'm trying to
dislocate the audience so they don't know where they are, and they have to give
themselves up to the movie. That's why the movie looks like an alternative now
instead of another future." So, don’t expect this Future to have Futuristic
fashions, or older fashions in a Futuristic context. In fact, don’t expect
anyone to dress very fashionably at all.
This
was not Cronenberg’s first foray into VR, “Videodrome” (1983) made it a central
the same year the term Cyberpunk was coined it the title of a short story by Bruce
Bethke
(1983), and one year before it became broadly known because of the success of William
Gibson’s novel “Neuromancer” (1984). Cronenberg has never made a sequel to any
of his films (though others did it for him), but “eXistenZ” linearly follows through
on many of “Videodrome’s” themes, so it’s the next-best thing. This
film is equally as Paranoid as “Videodrome,” way more twisty in plot (a
Character in the film actually says, “There are too many twists going on to follow”),
and far more playful in its deadpan humor.
Cronenberg was inspired to write this
film by an interview he did of Novelist Salman Rushdie. At the time, Rushdie
was in hiding because the Radical Theocrats in Iran had placed a bounty on his
head, in the form of a Fatwa, for disrespecting the Prophet Mohamed in his
novel “The Satanic Verses” (first published in 1988, and the claim of the
disrespect wasn’t entirely true, but we shouldn’t really be a surprised that Radical
Theocrats didn’t bother to read the book before condemning it). While the
interview was conducted, Scotland Yard Detectives were standing guard. Afterwards,
Cronenberg started toying with the idea of something like a Fatwah being
leveled against not a famous Author, but a Video-Game Designer.
(Short aside: The Fatwah was sort-of-lifted by
Iran in 1998, and Rushdie is now out of hiding, it is still technically still
in place, because it can’t be officially lifted by anyone except the one who
ordered it, the Ayatollah
Khomeini, who died the same year he issued it, 1989. Proof that Khomeini
Radical Evil still has power in the nearly successful Assassination Attempt against
Rushdie in ----)
(Second short aside: There’s a historically
specific marker for this film that has to be stated: in the USA pro-Gun Activists
were increasingly blaming violent video games for mass-shootings like that at Columbine High School (also 1999) to deflect-way
from the push for stronger gun-control regulations.)
Given Cronenberg’s history of Hyper-Intellectualized
Perversities, one should not be surprised that he both wants you to side with
the targets of the film’s Fatwah, but still makes the Fanatics’ case for them.
It opens in a
rural Church (symbolism definitely intended), the raw wood walls immediately
signaling the Low-Tech Aesthetic of this High-Tech tale. Antenna Research, a leading Computer
Game Company, has sent their most gifted Designer, Allegra Geller (Jennifer
Jason Leigh), to Beta-test their newest product, eXistenZ, with a Focus Group.
Allegra has earned an almost Cultish following, one Character refers to
one of her earlier Games, ArtGod, as “very
spiritual” and changed his life. When he’s asked what his life was like before,
he says he lived largely the same, "but only on the most pathetic level of
reality." Allegra, herself, first appears to be a bit of a wallflower,
but later gets all kinky at the prospect of being “plugged-in.”
In this Near-Future, most people have
surgically implanted Ports in the base of their spines allowing direct
interface with Computer Networks. This radical, personal, modification has
inspired fears of Mind Control and a radical Terrorist response: a group called
the “Realists” are dedicated to killing the new Technological Elite,
specifically Game Designers. Very quickly, Allegra is faced with an Assassination
attempt, and during it, her Game Consul might have been damaged. She spends the
rest of the film running from Assassins, maybe Realists, maybe Corporate
Competitors, and her only ally is a reluctant and low-wage flunky from her
company, Ted
Pikul (Jude Law).
Of greater concern to Allegra than her
own life is that her Consul contains the only copy of the Game (What? No
backups?), so she needs to go into the Game and check if it’s fixable or not. To
do this she needs someone to “play with,” so she draws Ted along. But Ted
doesn’t have a Port, and doesn’t like the idea. “Look, I've been dying to play
your Games, but I have this phobia about having my body penetrated surgically.”
She coyly temps him, "Once you're ported, there's no end to the Games you
can play." Like much of Cronenberg’s earlier work, especially “Crash”
(1996), bodily wounds and sexual penetration are directly associated.
Allegra arranges for Ted to get a port quickly
and illegally in the back of a filthy gas station. This surgery is performed by
grease-monkey named, get this, Gas (William Defoe) who is as totally off-the-wall
and as sinister as he is funny.
They don’t manage to get into the Game at this
point because Gas proved to be just another one of those plotting against
Allegra. This sets up a funny line (the film has a lot of funny lines) when
Allegra scolds Gas, “Don’t you ever
go to the movies?” because Gas
cannot see his choices and motivations are so predictable he’s bound to come to a bad end.
After a few more adventures, they are finally
inside, and new questions arise: can they ever return to the Real World, or
have they become trapped in VR?
As always with Cronenberg, Disease and Bodily
Violation is Metaphor, and Mutation is both inevitable and sickly Erotic. Denying
himself Computer keyboards or screens, Cronenberg went back to his Body Horror
roots to visualize the new Technologies. The Game Consoles are "Metaflesh Game
Pods" that look like uncooked meat by-products. Their buttons look like nipples.
The wires are called “Umbycords” because
they look like umbilical cords that and can only be inserted into that rather
anus-looking Port in your lower back after it’s been lubricated. The Pods pulse with a life of their own,
and Allegra holds hers like a baby. The
first Assassin bypassed a metal-detector by carrying a “Gristle Gun,” so named because it’s
made of meat and bone and fires bullets that are someone’s extracted teeth.
Later in the film, another Gristle Gun is assembled before our eyes out of the
bones of an unappetizing meal in a Chinese Restaurant, that scene is disgusting
and hilarious at the same time.
Once inside the Game, Game-logic rules.
Allegra is directed to "Look
for a Chinese restaurant in the forest--and order the special.'' After they
arrive the owner explains that "mutant reptiles and amphibians produce
previously unknown taste sensations,'' and the duo doesn’t hesitate in ordering
it.
Most of this essay is praise, and I stand by it, but
now I have to complain. I’m a huge Cronenberg fan, but have to admit this is
not my favorite of his. It’s smart, subversive, and its gore is weirdly
thoughtful, as is the case in almost all his films. He has the same cool and
analytical take on Characterization that we’ve come to know, but in other films
that coolness is buttressed by depth, and that’s not necessarily true here.
The problem emerges when Allegra and Ted
enter the Game, and there’s no attempt to distinguish between the two Realities
in the movies look (that was clearly a deliberate choice on Cronenberg’s part).
Actress Leigh easily reinvents herself in the second context, but Law, not so
much. Don’t get me wrong, there’s great stuff regarding Character Ted being a Game-virgin
whose actions and motivations are being rewritten by the Machine ("I find
this disgusting, but I can't help myself") but one starts to feel that it’s
not Character Ted is disorientated, but the Actor Law. In the past, Cronenberg’s
greatest Horrors were not the icky, drippy stuff, it was that the icky, drippy
stuff was deeply personal. This film is pretty impersonal.
This was Cronenberg’s first film to utilize digital
technology for the FX (excellent work by Jim Isaac) but it is
applied with the greatest restraint. For all the Monsters he’s given us in the
past, this is the first time he’s offered us something that might have escaped
Ray Harryhausen’s studio: a kitten-sized, two-headed amphibian, and quite
likable, but placed in the context of a film that plays to a deliberately cheap
aesthetic (buttressed by the very fine Production Designer and frequent Cronenberg
collaborator Carol
Spier, who created a much different look for “Videodrome”).
Ultimately though, these bold choices don’t jell.
Cronenberg said, "Now, I haven't seen ‘The
Matrix.’ I understand that there was some technology that was used that was
proposed to me for ‘eXistenZ.’ It's [also] used in a well-known Gap ad;
that's why I rejected it." Well, a noble ambition for sure, but “The
Matrix” still looked better.
Early in his career, Cronenberg was savaged by
unfairly harsh reviews from a Critical Establishment that was not ready for
him, but here he received super-abundant praise that, to me, seemed unearned.
Maybe, in retrospect, the Critics were too embarrassed to say boo because they
had been wrong about him for so long. But the audiences, and Cronenberg has a
very loyal fan-base, didn’t respond the way the Critics did. I’m sure that’s
the first time that ever happened to him. “eXistenZ” bombed, earning less than
his ultra-low-budget outing “The Brood” (1979), and that’s not even adjusting
for inflation.
Maybe the problem is that Cronenberg didn't pay
enough attention to Mel Brooks -- no, really, I’m serious. Most of Brooks best
films were Parodies of the cinema he loved (“Blazing
Saddles” (1974), “Young Frankenstein” (1974), “Silent Movie” (1976), “High
Anxiety” (1977) and “Spaceballs” (1987)). Though Cronenberg clearly has
played the Games, and understands them, he doesn’t display Brooks’ love. And he
kinda, actually, said so:
"Certainly, a lot of Games look
toward Hollywood. Unfortunately, it's only Hollywood they look to. There are
some other film sources they could look to which would be more interesting.
Cinema is really a mature art form, and so its revolutions are more subtle and
deeper, more intellectual and cerebral. There's no equivalent in the movies of
the increased chip speed and processing power that can give you better
graphics. In Games, the technological breakthroughs are what's promoted. It's
never really a breakthrough of imagination or awareness. And that's why I don't
consider Games art. The potential is there. And there's the interesting
question of whether something that collaborative can be art. The old,
relatively romantic view of the artist is that the artist has a vision which
somehow seduces, enraptures and takes you away to some other place."
Though “Videodrome” was shockingly absent
of likable Characters, there was a love of the edge they lived on, the sub-Culture
of cheap Cable TV and pirate VHS. But here, in the very first image, Cronenberg
defiantly stated he was “anti-slick” even though every single Game in the Real-World
is slick, or at least tries to be, which is why almost every other film about
VR aspires to look slick. He’s engaging in high-level commentary of a medium
without addressing the mannerisms of that medium (or maybe it’s the massage). For
the record, I don’t like Video Games, and I don’t like their slick aesthetic,
but you know, if it’s about the thing, it has to be the thing.
All complaints aside, I defy anyone to
find a film that takes on the Intellectual and Spiritual problems presented by
Gaming Culture and VR with greater boldness than this. There’s a surprise
ending, perhaps predictable but still ferocious, wherein we not only see that a
Gamer’s Mind has been polluted, but the very eXistenZ (pardon the pun) of Gamers has polluted the mind of
anti-Gamers as well.
Trailer:
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