Six people find themselves trapped inside a huge cube made up of thousands of room-sized cubes (imagine being inside a Rubik’s Cube twenty-six stories tall). Each cube is attached to adjoining cubes by hatches on each wall, floor and ceiling. In an early scene, we learn that some of the rooms are booby-trapped as a man who climbs into one of the cubes gets cubed himself by a grid of Ginsu sharp steel lines.

The characters, who include a schoolgirl with a knack for math, a cop, doctor, a mentally retarded man, a prison escape artist, and an architect, don’t know how they got there or why they are there, but try to pool their resources to find a way out. Searching for some understanding to their predicament, they theorize that each person has, like Adam Smith’s Division of Labour, a unique skill and purpose for being there. The schoolgirl shows her purpose when she begins to interpret the nine digit numbers assigned to each room.

The huge cube consisting of a maze of smaller cubes has a logical, mathematic basis. The characters, lost in logic, believe that solving the cube’s riddle will ensure their freedom. They don’t know why the cube exists speculating mostly on a twisted government experiment.

Like its characters thrown into a mysterious, but logical environment, the film indirectly touches on our predicament. We are living in a similar environment with physical laws and logic surrounding us, but we don’t know why or how we got here. Some speculate that God has created our world and placed us here for a reason. Atheists speculate that our universe is a result of random events and one clearly educated character, the architect, believes their predicament in the cube as an accident, a fluke.

Do not view the cube looking for any sort of answers. The suspense and mystery are compelling, but the questions the movie asks are never answered in any sort of concrete terms. This will definitely leave some people unsatisfied. The ending is reminescent of Socrates’ allegory of the Cave: our reality is what we see as shadows on the wall of a cave, but what exactly is outside the cave?

If one keeps in mind that the film expresses our predicament then philosophical tinkering can be enjoyed. How could we explain our predicament, floating on a small planet in a sea of galaxies and anti-matter? Yes, the cube can be solved in mathematical terms, but like those who believe a divine answer will be revealed by finding the Grand Unified Theory, will be disappointed when it doesn’t uncover the enigmatic nature of life.

Many of the characters change emotionally throughout the film. The schoolgirl is at first the hysterical one, but ends up being the most rational. The mentally retarded man is first regarded as a booby-trap liability then a puzzle-solving necessity. I was a little put off by the demonization of the cop, a large black man. At first he was the calm one, consoling each character and reminding them of their goal to escape, but then declines into a sadistic madman. The violent tendencies of humans in danger are placed directly on his shoulders, perpetuating the angry, aggressive black man stereotype.

Although the characters run the gamut of paranoia, fear, distrust, compassion, and hopelessness, some of the acting is noticeably bad. The morbidly quiet architect and mentally retarded man give the strongest performances. The other characters are often over the top, but the film pulls it off because of the Twilight Zone style of the film. Each room is a different color: a strong red that illuminates the player’s faces, a glaring blue, a fluorescent green. This contrasts the drab grayish uniforms the characters wear. The directing is nothing fancy, but the suspense and surprises for such a simple idea are pulled off adequately.

The Cube, a Canadian film directed by Vincenzo Natali, isn’t a brilliant film, but it’s ambitious and tackles issues most Hollywood movies won’t even hint about. The Cube has been appropriately likened to the Twilight Zone. The acting isn’t great, the sets are simple, the camera angles are clichéd but the film’s ideas are absorbing and I for one like a good mind trip once in awhile.


Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day