I Found This In My Soup.

Virtual reality has advanced in leaps and bounds over the past few years, evolving from a quaint theory expounded in a few science fiction pot-boilers to something very much real, and in the real world from a basically useless form of rather poor-quality game playing into a diverse subject area encompassing advanced entertainment systems as well as packages designed to perform more vital functions such as professional training in situations where other, more traditional forms of training might be either too dangerous or too expensive to consider.

As new science fiction attempts to portray the potential effects of this new technological development upon society, it was inevitable that the traditional tropes of VR storytelling, represented by films and TV shows such as ‘The Lawnmower Man’ (and sequel), ‘VR.5’ etc., would be replaced by something a little more representative of the way in which the VR industry was going and could go. This is where (among a few others such as ‘The Thirteenth Floor’), ‘eXistenZ’ steps in.

Unfortunately, Pikul does not have a bioport installed, and hence cannot play eXistenZ (or any other of the modern VR games). A trip to the local Gas Station is thus executed in order to get an unregistered bioport installed in the middle of the night, but unfortunately the proprietor, aware of a reward on the head of both Gellar and her new device, deliberately faulty port. Escaping this further attempted assassination, the pair arrive at the countryside retreat of one of Gellar’s game-development associates. With a new bioport installed into Pikul, the two begin to play the game of eXistenZ, but as they play the game, and then the game within the game, they start to become unsure of where reality begins and ends, and one thing is certain: each ‘level’ of consciousness (game?) hints at something on the level above. But what is the game trying to say?

In any film in which a ‘surprise’ is to be revealed at the end, there is a tendency to fall into one of two traps. The first trap is to make the surprise so obvious, or to telegraph the surprise in such a laboured way, that all but the most direly stupid viewer — which is the category which big-budget US films seem to constantly pander to — will have guessed the resolution way before it actually occurs (The Thirteenth Floor, anyone?). The second trap is to simply insert a totally random surprise at the end of the story, which has not been telegraphed whatsoever and which often actually flies in the face of what we already know about the characters or the situation; this leads to the audience rightly feeling cheated, and such films are frankly not clever at all.

In terms of the second pitfall outlined above, I believe that the ending is actually quite well telegraphed, and that this subtle telegraphing actually ties in nicely with the symmetries and meanings of the various levels of the film. In order to see why this is, it is necessary to make three observations:

(2) that what we see throughout the entire film looks slightly unreal (or, in some cases, downright faked or staged). Some people might try to subconsciously ignore this, imagining it to be a product of the film’s relatively low budget, but it is very difficult to attribute any other explanation than deliberate staging to the following: characters speaking in fake American (or Canadian) accents; rear-projection used during driving scenes; overly generic and clue-bearing trademarks and titles (“Country Gas Station”); lighting which is perfectly clear in the foreground but which fades quickly in the background so that the surrounding appear black (see the Gas Station exterior and the scene where Gellar has the tooth removed at the roadside), which makes the overall impression of a film (or Game) set; etc. There are also additional clues given by the actions of the characters: Gellar bouncing stones off the surfaces of the Gas Station; Pikul curiously feeling the texture of a chair. The characters themselves, of course, know that they are in a simulation and are anxious to test the limitations of the system (especially Gellar and Pikul, as it turns out, because they are looking for yet further confirmation of their belief that the simulations are so realistic as to be potentially dangerous). Essentially, what we are seeing is the false nature of a film reproduced deliberately, and this, using the assumption that such a game would use technologies similar to those used in film in its rendering, implies that what we are seeing is actually a Game.

The message of the film is essentially one of reasoned caution in the face of technological advance. The human race, the film argues, evolves at an incredibly slow rate determined by gradual natural pressures, whilst the consumer products and especially computer technology that human society generates evolve and improve at a hugely faster rate by comparison. It is all too easy to become obsessed with technology at the expense of all else, and to see technology as an end in itself rather than as a means to another. Thankfully, however, although showing rather convincingly the way in which humans can be deceived and obsessed with technology, as well as the kind of person who is likely to champion such a cause to an absurd level (another brilliantly wacky role for Robert A. Silverman in a Cronenberg film), eXistenZ stops short of being completely technophobic by showing the Realists in a rather harsh light as well, as the religiously-zealous type of people with fundamentalist mentalities such people would invariably be.

In terms of whether the film is actually enjoyable to watch, this depends very much on the state of mind of the audience. As a science fiction film, and as a David Cronenberg project, the film is going to attract a very definite audience demographic of sci-fi, horror and slipstream film fans, and I am unsure as to whether all of these people will be willing to tolerate both the pace of the film, which is very much like a mystery-genre film, and the uncertainty associated with viewing the film for the first time — eXistenZ is a film which, at first viewing, does not appear to have a clear destination to head for, and an audience may feel disjointed because of this.

In terms of purely technical reviewing, the acting is very good all round, including from those characters who are deliberately poorly played or have deliberately dodgy accents. Both Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jude Law carry their parts exceedingly well; Jude Law looks exactly the part of the ‘PR nerd’ he is thought to be for much of the film, whilst Leigh is both glamorous enough for lead work and quirky enough to be believable as a Game designer / Realist zealot and assassin. Genre favourite Ian Holm rises to the occasion as usual, with his British thespianism given a twist in the form of a naff Eastern European accent which works surprisingly well, and Willem Dafoe, though given a relatively minor role, is nevertheless memorable as Gas, sporting a wonderfully convincing layer of grime (including bloody thumbnail) to boot.