Hulu.com just uploaded a copy of this movie. I remember being outright baffled by it. It may have been a few years before it's time. But now with the MMORPG games hitting their prime, the message of the film becomes more immediate.
It had the misfortune to be released at the same time as that cultural juggernaut "The Matrix". And it was compared as being in the same theme. Well, yes and no. "The Matrix" if it had anything to do with "eXistenZ" at all, would be the subject of the mysterious in-game "TranscendenZ". But it certainly isn't "eXistenZ".
In fact, as the real protagonist reveals, he did not create eXistenZ at all. What the movie is about is the war between dreams and reality. How people would love to give themselves up to total immersion in game worlds. Worlds in which they have no consequences for their actions. It is about how the world keeps interrupting these fantasies.
What eXistenZ is, is a projection into a shared lucid dream of the film's characters. They are beta testers for the game of "TranscendenZ". A clever play on Transcendentialism, I suppose. In which people turn themselves into the gods of the game worlds.
The film viewer never discovers what TranscendenZ was about. As I stated before, it could probably be "The Matrix" or even the TV show "Heroes". What the game seems to be is an induced meditative dream state between the players. They are following hidden suggestive clues planted by the designer. But the game is literally dreamed up by the group, and the game would change with each group playing.
In the film the game is literally hijacked by terrorists. It is their sheer will to keep to their purpose that throws TranscendenZ off kilter, and like in dreams their plans keep being revealed to all. However even when this is all in the open, it remains hidden because everyone involved thinks that they are in a carefully designed game.
Cronenberg really pulled out all the stops in piling on Freudian imagery, especially the sexually suggestive. Everyone in the film is constantly sticking their fingers into everyone's game port implants (body holes). It plays with heterosexual as well as homosexual implications. There is an obsession with bodily fluids, touch and taste experiences. There are also dream symbols that keep returning like the neighborhood dog. Mantras are also used to keep the characters on the correct journey. The game jumps around in time, when the two main characters almost lose control of their shared agenda. Because eXistenZ, is the game of the terrorists. They keep pulling themselves back to existence, to reality and bringing that reality into the dream world of TranscendenZ. While the others are playing, the terrorists are rehearsing.
And they can't be stopped because the other participants are so enamored by the shared dream/hallucination, they are unable to distinguish between reality and unreality. They have literally welcomed psychosis into their own lives.
Its a fantastic film and I'm sorry that I couldn't appreciate it more when it was originally released.
Labels: commentary, computers, mmorpgs, movies, reviews, technology, video games
