Existenz

I had originally intended to space out my articles on Videodrome and Existenz, but here it is. After seeing Videodrome at a young age, I became enamored by Cronenberg’s film work. As such, I distanced myself from his 1999 film, Existenz, as it sounded like a flop and was released close to a similar film, 13th Floor. Building on themes that he had introduced in his previous works such as the aforementioned Videodrome and Naked Lunch, Existenz poses a number of questions on the nature of reality and our place in it.

The plot involves an assassination attempt on the life of award-winning game designer Allegra Geller(played by Jennifer Jason-Leigh) as she is about to unveil her latest immersive video game on a group of test subjects. Running wild into the outside world, she randomly falls into the care of unassuming marketing trainee Ted Pikul (played by Jude Law). The assassin is a member of a movement determined to wipe out immersive video gamers. While Geller plays the tough bitch in public, she actually suffers from mild social anxiety and reluctantly trusts Pikul to protect her while she attempts to scavenge what remains of her game from its unusual player. To make sure that the game is still in working order, she asks Pikul to co-pilot a test run with her, and after the pair plug in, they fall down the rabbit hole of fantasy.

Trailer

The role of the game, where the player must decipher what s/he is meant to do in certain situations with little prompting was a timely statement in 1999. Not as overly flamboyant as the Matrix, Existenz portrays the modern gamer escaping reality for a custom-made one where s/he gets to re-invent themselves in whatever way they choose. As Internet chat rooms and the like were coming into fashion at the time, this was a rather bold statement that might have been viewed as obvious and pretentious. The line between the game and reality becomes soft, at one point the two characters that we have been following come out of the game to find themselves not as the characters that we have accepted them to be, but instead a pair of beta-testers trying out a new game. The testers joke about their outlandish behavior in the game as actors would after a performance, adding another layer to the film.

Metaflesh Game Pod

The gamepod itself is an oddity, looking more like the breathing typewriters from Naked Lunch. The Metaflesh Game Pod isn’t constructed at all, but rather it is grown from ‘amphibian embryos.’ The device looks almost pornographic as it undulates information the the player through a Umbycord. Rather than switches or buttins, nipple-like protuberances are used to interact with the Game Pod. Not only does it breath, it coos when it is stroked. In the real world, the term ’sexy’ is placed on technology every day and many of is spend more time with a keyboard than our loved ones… so Cronenberg ain’t far off with this idea.

The whole movie is like a Gordian knot as the line ‘are we in the game’ becomes something that was initially spoken in excitement but later turns into a statement of anxiety and fear. After Pikul and Geller gun down the beta-testers in cold blood, revealing themselves to be anti-game terrorists in strict defiance to the drug-like effect that Existenz has on humanity, the last victim does a double take, his reaction changing from horror to confusion, ‘are we in the game?’ If we are not in the game, then what are we doing is the question asked. Who are we? Why are we doing anything at all? And is the real world so bad that escapism is the only answer? In a world where real live people are married online in MMORPGs and would rather spend an evening pretending to be someone else, it’s a valid question.

A forgotten gem to some, Existenz nonetheless garnered several awards including the Saturn award for best sci-fi film of 2000. If you have not seen it, give it a shot.