Film Friday: eXistenZ (1999)

Written and directed by David Cronenberg, eXistenZ is one of those films. It’s got a great science fiction concept, a quality cast (Jude Law, Willem DaFoe, Ian Holm) and enough mystery to hold your interest. I generally enjoy it and even find it strangely fascinating. Yet, it’s unsatisfying. And the more I think about it, the less satisfying it gets. The reason for this, sadly, is that Cronenberg has created a mess and he tries to cheat his way out of it.

Before we go further, let me give two warnings. First, there will be serious spoilers, including discussions of the twists. Secondly, you can enjoy this film if you don’t think about it. So if ignorance is bliss, then skip this review.

1. The Plot:

eXistenZ starts as the story of Allegra Geller (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and Ted Pikul (Jude Law), who are on the run from people trying to kill Geller. Geller is the world’s greatest virtual reality game designer and she has a new game called eXistenZ, the only copy of which is in her game pod -- a living game machine that ports into your body. Pikul is a marketing guy assigned to protect her. The people trying to kill her are a nebulous group of “realists,” who are waging a vague military style insurgency against her company for distorting reality.

As they run, Geller’s game pod is damaged in an assassination attempt and she decides to test the game to make sure it still works. Inside the game world (“Cort-Stim world”), they discover a somewhat parallel world also with a violent struggle between virtualists and realists. Numerous twists and turns later, they return to the world in which the film started (“eXistenZ world”) only to discover that realists have launched an attack on them. This leads to a quick series of betrayals, which end when it is revealed that this world is actually a videogame called tranCendenZ and the people they’ve been running into are other players who are test marketing the game in the real world (“tranCendenZ world”).

2. Failure of Concept:

You should recognize this as the classic science fiction theme of a reality within a reality, as seen in films like Inception and The Thirteenth Floor. These stories work by blurring the worlds and causing the characters to lose track of which reality is real. Indeed, these films invariably end with some character asking “but what if this isn’t real?” eXistenZ is no different. It tries very hard to make us think the characters are losing track of what is real and what isn’t and it even ends on the line: “are we still in the game?” Yet, eXistenZ fails entirely to pull this off because it never presents anything to make us believe the characters could be the least bit confused about what is reality and what isn’t.

Consider the “reality” in which most of the movie takes place -- Cort-Stim world. We know from the get go that this world exists solely inside a videogame and at no point is it ever suggested that this world might be real. Thus, the whole concept of having a world within a world is undercut from the beginning because both the audience and the characters know this is just a videogame. Further, there is no bleed through from one world to the other, there is no threat that can travel back and forth, and there is no possibility of getting stuck in Cort-Stim world. Moreover, Cort-Stim world is full of obvious game elements (like characters going into game loops) which don’t exist in eXistenZ world, and thus make it easy to tell which world is which.

Despite this, Cronenberg tries to sell the audience on the idea of confusion by filling Pikul's dialog with comments about having a hard time telling the difference between the "real" world (eXistenZ world) and the game world. But this makes no sense. Pikul knows he’s plugged into a game and he’s only been playing for a few minutes. So why would he be confused? Also, to convince the audience that this confusion is real, Cronenberg has Pikul spend his time in the game being pensive about the dangers they are facing and asking repeatedly to leave the game before something bad happens. But this is as nonsensical as worrying about getting hurt in a car race game.

Further, this game world bears no relationship to an actual game. It has some classic game elements, but it has no goals or objectives or instruction to players. It offers only one path to the players, with no choice to be made or tasks to be completed, and it lasts only a few minutes and ends with no possibility of victory. All in all, nothing about this feels like a game at all; it just feels like plot filler used to give the characters an appearance of doing something before the film ends, especially the supposed “game urges” which are little more than gratuitous sexual moments that have no purpose in the game (there is oddly out-of-place gratuitous gore too which you don't expect in this kind of film).

eXistenZ world fairs no better. Things seem to happen randomly and much of it is unbelievable and contradictory. The attack of the realist in particular was poorly done. For example, you see them setting off explosions where there are no targets and firing wildly at nothing. Then one of the rebels declares victory, but against what? Then he decides to kill Geller, only Geller gets saved by a man who then tries to kill her, only to have another man try to kill her who has also saved her a couple times and could have killed her at his leisure many times before. Why does everyone who wants to kill her try to save her first? The explanation given by the final assassin is ridiculous: “I wanted to get to know who I was killing first.” Yeah, sure, so much for the dedicated revolutionary.

A good example of this illogic comes from Willem DaFoe’s character. He decides to kill Geller to get a five million dollar reward. But rather than just kill her, he first agrees to install a bioport into Pikul. Why? Because he wants to install a defective bioport in the hopes of killing Geller’s game because there is a bonus reward for killing the game. But how does this make sense? If he kills Geller and Pikul as he plans, then he has the pod and he can burn it or shoot it or whatever. Why go through the elaborate hoax? Also, does it really make sense the people offering the reward would pay for a burned out pod or would they want to verify the game was on the pod? Also, how does he know they will play the game at his gas station so that he gets a chance to kill them after they play? And how does he even know this is the only copy of the game? Essentially, he has to know the plot before his actions make any sense.

Pikul and Geller’s characters fall apart too once we learn eXistenZ world is a game as well. If this world isn’t real and Geller isn’t actually the designer of the game, then she has too much intimate knowledge of the game and of Cort-Stim world. Her knowledge goes way beyond what a first-time player would know. And if the object of eXistenZ is to kill Geller, why doesn’t Pikul just kill her the first chance he gets and win the game? Also, when she shoots her friend, why does Pikul lecturer her that she might have just killed a real human being? This is nonsense. Both Cort-Stim world and eXistenZ world are game worlds. So unless he's claiming confusion with tranCendenZ world, these couldn't possibly be real people -- and he never claims such confusion.

The problem here is that the point Cronenberg is trying to make doesn't come naturally from the story's plot elements, so he's trying to force it by having the characters just say it. But that doesn't work. If the characters really are losing touch with reality, the film needs to show that through its story and the characters’ actions; the writer can’t just have the characters say “gee, I’m losing touch with reality.” What's happened here is Cronenberg made a mess of the underlying concept and he never bothered sorting it out before he made the film. Instead, he hopes to hide this fact by covering up the mess with forced dialog. This doesn't work. In fact, compare this with Inception, where the story methodically builds all the elements needed to let the audience question whether any of the worlds in which the characters find themselves can ever be proven to be real and leaves them wondering how the characters would actually know.

If Cronenberg had bothered solving his plot problems rather than just covering them up, eXistenZ could have been Inception before Inception.