and
The Appropriate Tune: "Games Without Frontiers", by Peter Gabriel
Again we return to the 1990’s, and are again reminded that all things change. Mountains crumble, flowers wither and die, and some popular 80s genre film directors lost their touch. So it was with John Carpenter, who kicked off his 90’s experience with the Chevy Chase flop Memoirs of an Invisible Man, briefly revived with the cult hit In the Mouth of Madness, and quickly went downhill from there. So it was with George A. Romero, who contributed a couple segments to anthology flicks as well as an arguably unnecessary remake of his film Night of Living Dead in 1990, and rounding things off the unregarded Rochard Bachman opus The Dark Half in ‘93. So it might have seemed for the film industry’s kookiest Canadian, David Cronenberg, and yet he never suffered the precipitous fall that Carpenter or Romero or Verhoeven did in that decade. His first film of that period was 1991’s Naked Lunch after all, which ended up becoming one of his most famous films, so he was starting off hot. 1993 saw the release of romantic drama M. Butterfly, which despite it being a commercial and critical flop heralded Cronenberg’s willingness to break with the popular perception of him as a filmmaker, which ended up leading towards his career resurgence in the 00’s. Crash was next in 1996, the only film of his career thus far to win at Cannes (the Jury Prize rather than the Palme d’Or but still), as well as a couple of Canadian Cinema Awards. Not that bad of a run for a director, but before the decade was out and we all died from Y2K ol’ Croney figured he’d throw out one more for the road. A film that brought him back to what made him so famous in the first place, while also serving as a capstone for that : The horror and science-fiction genres.
Released in 1999 by Miramax, Existenz (or eXistenZ if you’re naughty) was written and directed by David Cronenberg, the last film to be credited as such until 2012’s Cosmopolis. The year is unspecified future, and world famous game designer Allegra Geller (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is leading a product testing seminar of her latest game eXistenZ, a landmark new title for the game pod, which is basically a bag of flesh that you jack yourself into through a hole in your spine. Everything is going well until a lone gunman arrives and starts shooting up the joint with a gun that shoots teeth. Allegra is rushed to the safety of the countryside by marketing trainee Ted Pikul (Jude Law), but she’s less interested in her own safety than she is in the health of her game pod, which was damaged during the shootout while downloading the game. She wants to get in there and see if things are alright and she needs Ted’s help to do it, only Ted doesn’t have the spine hole he needs to do the jacking. So they head off to a back alley hole dealer, only to learn the truth of the matter: There’s been a hit put out on Allegra, 5 million dollars for her death. Scary stuff, but they still need to get in that lumpy sack and poke around, and so Ted gets his cherry popped and they get all up in there. Which only raises even more questions, some more eXistenZial than others, but I think I’m running out of lewd wordplay so we’ll stop there.
1999 was not only the end of Cronenberg’s dabbling in the science-fiction and horror genres, but of course it also was the Golden Year for the concept of virtual reality. The 90s had been littered with such films of course, Total Recall, The Lawnmower Man, etc., but of course ‘99 was the year of The Matrix. Even though cyberpunk had existed years before, The Matrix’s explosive popularity was such that it became the defining example of those concepts. It’s as if no one had questioned the nature of reality before the Matrix, and then suddenly you couldn’t go anywhere without people saying it’s all a simulation man, although I’m not sure how much would really in the world besides basically recreating religion but for nerds. That all died down somewhat by the time the Matrix sequels and subsequently underperformed, but with the success of films like Inception it seems that the idea that the reality that we live in may not be what it appears to be is still going strong. Probably because it allows people to disconnect themselves from the problems of the world rather than trying to solve said problems or something like that.
So it is with our film here: Multiple layers of reality, surrealist imagery, characters who aren’t what they seem, hell there’s even a terrorist group here that’s dedicated to killing those who have committed ‘crimes against reality’. Where eXistenz changes things up, however, is that it approaches these things through the lens of game design. Again, a topic that had been tackled in cyberpunk literature, see Snow Crash, but I don’t know how many movies at the time were tackling aspects of game design like NPC and railroading the player. Not that deeply, it’s not like anyone is bustin out cheat codes or exploiting mechanics or what have you, but keep in mind that this is 1999; While video games were certainly on a hot streak at the time, with the release of the Dreamcast in North America and the Playstation 2 a year away, the rest of pop culture was largely stuck in the arcade days. They certainly weren’t art, so the story goes, merely mindless trifles meant for children and teenage boys that can’t get laid. So even if this film could be taken as an anti-video game film if nothing else it’s kind of cool that Cronenberg, whose film career began in 1969, wasn’t so immersed in the mystique of film that he couldn’t even fathom video games as a medium..
Of course we all know what to expect when we go into a Cronenberg movie, and eXistenZ is no exception. Everything about the game pods have been tailor made to be as gross and as off-putting as possible; From their lumpy misshapen forms containing their horrific insides, to the way they squirm and wriggle around, to the absolute hell that is their creation, the absolute last thing you’d ever want connected to your spinal column. On the other side you’ve got the skeleton gun that shoots teeth, pretty badass, which was featured far more prominently on the posters than it ever is in the film. Not a lot of people-centric body horror this time around, but you do get a bit of the ol’ ultraviolence, so if you’re worried about your movies being bloody enough then Dave has got you covered.
What is body-centric in this movie though is the eroticism. All that innuendo I was using in the synopsis is not hyperbole, this film is blatantly, openly horny. That’s not too much of a surprise, as Videodrome and Crash were both very sexual films, but Cronenberg isn’t even trying to be subtle in this one. One of the leads is a woman who spent her life creating this thing which resides in this unformed lump of flesh that is connected to one’s body through a fleshy cord, while the other is a young man who’s afraid of penetration and catching a disease who is introduced to this pleasurable thing by an experienced older woman, not to mention they way they treat those bio-ports looks like it was lifted from pornhub. It’s such an obvious Intro to Film Theory style symbolism that you can’t help but think it was intentional on the part of Cronenberg, which makes sense with regards to revelations in the final act, but up until that point you’ve gotta wonder just what Dave was getting into in that writer’s room.
As for the cast, I think Jude Law plays a pretty good virgin and Jennifer Jason Leigh plays a good junkie. Then you’ve got Willem Dafoe as Gas the gas station attendant, who is always a good pull when you’re trying to make a creepy movie. The biggest surprise for me though was that Christopher Eccleston was in here, better known as the ninth iteration of The Doctor from the British sci-fi series Doctor Who. He doesn’t have a big role or anything but I believe this is the first movie I’ve ever reviewed that featured someone who played The Doctor. Besides the Doctor Who movie of course, and no Peter Cushing doesn’t count.
It’s always a bit frustrating when you try to critique these movies though, because your problems with the story can be countered by the nature of the premise. Why are they using mutated frogs you plug into your spine to play video games? How exactly do you make games on a mutated frog? How did Allegra make the game eXistenZ but is oblivious as to what’s in it, and if she seems to have no control over what’s in the game how would she know what was wrong with it? How is a game that’s so complex that it plugs into your central nervous system to function still dealing with the equivalent of adventure game text parsers? Well that’s because it’s a simulation, it’s all fake, so it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t make sense because that mystery tho. Which is fine, I enjoy a good mystery, but there’s a narrowness to this film that prevents me from digging too deep into. Like why is this what games are? Why is there a group dedicated to murdering game designers? Has the world fallen into some sort of dystopia where they’re addicted to virtual reality and they’re trying to liberate mankind, or are they just dicks? Who knows, because the entirety of the movie seems to take place in one 20-mile stretch of land in the Pacific Northwest, and we know nothing about how this world works. Who cares, because it’s all a simulation, it’s all fake, and none of it matters.So yeah, it’s a tad frustrating.
What is the crux of Cronenberg’s focus as a filmmaker? I dunno, as I haven’t dipped into his entire filmography, but if I pretend to be one of those big shot paid movie critics I’d say that he’s a people person. Humanity, violent and sexual animals that we are, how those urges are expressed as the species grows ever more advanced. Secret government experiments change infants into psychic killers in Scanners. James Woods transforms into a super-powered monster through the power of video porn in Videodrome. Crash has man using the tools of man (automobiles) to violently inflict change upon itself, to the point where horrific scars and mutilations, which would be considered antithetical to the ideal life otherwise are considered signs of passion and lust. Existenz is the logical conclusion of that idea; Mankind has pushed itself to the point where reality itself has become an inconvenience that one can slough off for something better at the earliest opportunity. Why be just a person when you can be a god of your own private universe? Indeed, when reality is a game what does it even mean to be a human? What does it mean to exist?
Heady stuff, but honestly as a film I found eXistenZ to be a rather sedate experience. Rather ironic for a movie centered around video games to contain such little action (unless that game was Myst I guess). Criticize the Wachowskis if you want, but as goofy as The Matrix is story-wise the reason it was as successful as it was because of that story was bolstered by kung-fu fights and slow motion bullet dodging. It was a movie that both the nerds and the jocks could enjoy. That being said, The Matrix never had Neo try to tongue-fuck an open wound on Morpheus’ back, so I think I’ll give eXistenZ a mild recommendation. I’ve referenced them about 30 times so far, but if you liked Cronenberg’s previous films like Videodrome and Crash, then you’re probably going to like this one as well. Make sure you’re wearing your Oculus Rift while watching though, so you can get the full experience.
