Warning: Extremely pompous analysis ahead. Enter the alternate world of this review at your peril.
If you're much of a television viewer, you've probably already seen an incredibly abbreviated version of eXistenZ. I'm thinking of the Circuit City commercial that features two seeming teenagers (a boy and a girl) who play a video game in which they go on a virtual date. The boy scores points for saying/doing the right things and loses points for looking at other girls and saying, "I want to kiss you," at the end of the virtual date. (He gets a mega-bonus for following up the kiss proposal with, "But I'll wait until we get to know each other better." Awww, ain't it just too cute?)
The difference between the commercial and the movie is that the commercial is revoltingly sappy and stupid. The similarity, however, is more important; for both the film and the advertisement rely on the assumption that it won't be long before video game players will not only imagine that they are the first-person shooters on their computer screens, but will genuinely enter alternate universes created by game designers. Moreover, these universes, despite being incredibly sophisticated, will routinely present gamers with the opportunity to discover the rules (and even the goals) of the games during gameplay.
In his excellent review of eXistenZ, Grouch asks the reader WHY the capital Y is missing from the title. Clearly, it's a case of a punning title that begs the question "why" via its decision to go begging for the homophonic letter. But there's more to it than that. The letter Y is the best, most proper link between X and Z. And we are forced to ask the question precisely because we already know the answer: Why do we need to link X and Z? Why is the world of X separated from the world of Z?
Even more to the point, however, is the fact that X, Y, and Z are the axes along which mathematicians locate things in space. We have to know our X, Y, and Z coordinates in order to know where we are. And the point of eXistenZ, the game that the characters in the movie play, is to destabilize one's awareness of where one is.
In other words, the real "gaminess" of eXistenZ--the essential fun of it--is the inability of even veteran players to distinguish between whether they are, in fact, in the real world or in the game world. They are genuinely incapable of finding their own coordinates, of locating themselves in space. Writer/director David Cronenberg does an absolutely brilliant job of trying to help the viewer understand the truly seductive potential of virtual reality. And that seductive quality is not the possibility of leaving our own practical reality behind us, but of testing the limits of our sanity as we straddle two entirely different realities.
Our focus is on two characters played by Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jude Law--characters whose names may be their real names or may only be their game names. Leigh seems to play a game designer, but may only be a gamer assigned the role of a game designer in a game that may or may not end before the final credits roll.
Sound confusing?
Well, if you think it's absolutely necessary to be able to say what really happened in a movie in order to consider yourself unconfused, then it is confusing. But if you're willing to grapple with the open-endedness that Cronenberg considers essential to a latter day tale of the lotus eaters, then it makes perfect sense. If the characters in the film can't tell which universe they're in, why should the viewer be able to?
eXistenZ is a rarity: a futuristic film that tries to deal more with the philosophical implications of technology than with the how and why of a specific advance. There is no Crichtonesque use of amber-captured DNA to make the plot work. There is no di-lithium crystal to power the Enterprise. The characters even go out of their way to mock the technology that the game relies on. In looking over a factory that produces gamepods (biotechnical variations on the joystick, but more clitoral than phallic), Law says, "Oh sure, I suppose making gamepods out of mutated amphibians is perfectly feasible, but does it have to be so dirty?"
The film makes no effort to justify the feasibility of such a production system--no more than it attempts to explain why people would allow electronic ports to be inserted into their spines by gas station attendants. It makes fun of its own premise in a way that is reminiscent of how Bill and Ted giggle at their ability to travel through time. But eXistenZ never needs to examine its premise very thoroughly because it does such an extraordinary job of analyzing the ramifications of its premise.
eXistenZ is actually a thoughtful, thought-provoking, entertaining romp through the game world that Cronenberg was far more interested in probing than in demystifying. It becomes a little silly at times, but never stupid. I've been steering clear of Cronenberg because he tends to go a little overboard with his ideas, but this film has prompted me to rethink my position. If you saw the ads for Crash and swore that you would never watch anything by Cronenberg, eXistenZ might be the perfect film to help you overcome your aversion.
While testing her new virtual reality game, eXistenZ, Allegra Geller, the world's leading game designer, is attacked by a crazed assassin and is force...More at HotMovieSale.com
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