eXistenZ: Alliance Atlantis Communications/ Dimension Films Rating: USA: R/ UK: 15/ Australia: M
Few filmmakers possess such a distinctive visual style that you can recognize their work from viewing only a scene or two of a film—Dario Argento does as does Stanley Kubrick. However, perhaps the most distinctive director working in film today is David Cronenberg (Videodrome, The Dead Zone, The Brood). Cronenberg’s films are infamous for their intriguingly odd and menacing visual style, their quirky sexuality, and their gruesome imagery of bodies gripped by disease. His films are certainly not for the squeamish, but that’s what makes them both so interesting, and ultimately, so Cronenbergian.
While everyone was busy raving about last year’s hit, The Matrix, they were missing out on Cronenberg’s latest foray into similar territory—the much more intriguing eXistenZ (which is written with the weird capitalization in the film, and is pronounced like "existential".
In 1983, Cronenberg would unleash his masterpiece, the surreal and haunting Videodrome—a film that explored our growing fascination with television and video and how it often came to define our sense of reality. Sixteen years later, he returns to expand upon his thesis by exploring the relatively newer media forms of video games and virtual reality and how we can often lose ourselves in the fantasty worlds created by both.
eXistenZ is the newest game from Antennae Entertainment, a large corporation who designs video games. The film opens with a small group of game fans gathered in a rural church to beta test the new game of programmer Allegra Geller (Jennifer Jason Leigh: Dolores Claiborne, Single White Female). However, not everyone is so fascinated by this new form of reality-bending media—witnessed by the fact that an assassin arrives just as the beta test begins and shoots Allegra with an odd looking gun made out of bone (and shoots human teeth as bullets).
Allegra escapes with public relations nerd Ted Pikul (Jude Law: The Talented Mr. Ripley) and the two go on the run.
The game itself is nothing like today’s gaming systems. eXistenZ is a virtual reality experience that’s totally immersive—but you don’t wear a bulky headset and gloves. In the near future, everyone has bio-ports, small holes drilled into your spinal column that allow game pods to be connected to your neural centers (with a flesh-like umbilical cord). The pods themselves are these weird, fleshy, breast-like objects with nubs and nipples that must be manipulated to work the game—it’s all strangely sexual, as the bio-ports need lubrication, often provided by a wet finger inserted into the hole…and it’s typical Cronenberg.
During the failed assassination, Allegra’s pod has sustained some serious damage—which is a big problem because her only copy of eXistenZ is housed inside it. She needs Pikul (who has never played her game and doesn’t even have a bio-port) to join her and play the game to make sure it still works—which is where the "screw with your head" element of the film comes into play as the line between the game and reality—which are blurred to begin with—becomes even more tenuous.
The film bears more than a bit of a resemblance to Cronenberg’s Videodrome, but it’s a less surreal, more standard affair than the earlier film. Videodrome featured the battle cry of "death to Videodrome! long live the new flesh!" while this film features the very similar "Death to the demoness Allegra Geller!" On top of that, one could make the case that these new fleshy gamepods are indeed the "new flesh" of Videodrome. However, eXistenZ never takes us as far into left field—neither narratively nor philosophically—as Videodrome…a fact which makes it one of the more accessible films in Cronenberg’s filmography. The twist ending seems less powerful than the one in Videodrome, but it’s still satisfying (if a bit predictable).
Like Jacob’s Ladder, Angel Heart, and The Sixth Sense, this film features an ending that surprises you and makes you want to watch the film again to pick up on all the things you might not have caught the first time through.
Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jude Law are both good in the lead roles. Law is especially entertaining, playing the doofy Pikul quite well. The rest of the film features your standard odd Cronenberg performances, including Don McKeller as a Russian game character Yvgeny Nourish, Oscar Hsu as a Chinese waiter, and Cronenberg regular Robert Silverman as D’Arcy Nader—a game store clerk. And while all of those performances are good, Willem Dafoe steals the few scenes he’s in as the aptly named gas station attendant, Gas.
The film features a fair amount of gore—including several bloody gunshot wounds courtesy of the bone gun. Since the gamepods are made from the internal organs of amphibians, there are a lot of scenes of gutted frogs and lizards as well. It’s not the stomach churning stuff of earlier Cronenberg films like The Fly, but it will probably upset you if you’re fairly squeamish.
Frequent Cronenberg composer Howard Shore handles the scoring duties here, turning in a finely crafted classical score that’s not quite as memorable as his previous work, but fits nicely with the film.
With eXistenZ, director David Cronenberg returns to his film roots. After making films like Crash and Dead Ringers (both of which are fine films, but not what the hardcore Cronenberg fans were used to) he comes home to re-explore the ideas he first raised over sixteen years ago with Videodrome. eXistenZ never quite lives up to that earlier film (partially because Jude Law isn’t James Woods), but it’s still a worthy companion piece. If you’re a fan of The Matrix, weird sci-fi, or Cronenberg’s work, then eXistenZ is well worth checking out.
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