108 minutes (15) 2021
Dogwoof Blu-ray
Rating: 6/10
Review by Steven Hampton
One of the greatest philosophical questions that emerged from science fiction’s concerns and considerations about Virtual Reality is, basically: if nothing’s physically real in cyber-space, must we then simply abandon all morality? Where’s the harm in ‘torture’, slavery, and/ or ‘murder’ by termination if there’s no actual victim affected by apparent ‘crimes’? As if this crucial genre riddle wasn’t disturbing enough what if ‘nothing’ we know is ‘real’?
Is our Earthly reality just a simulation running on cosmic machinery of a super-advanced computer system? Kardashev’s theory of mega-civilisation types might suggest how it all could work. If there’s no practical difference between type IV (universe-spanning) and/ or type V (Ω) multi-verse scale civilisations, and our various notions of god, then (probably?) we cannot know for certain, anyway. This brain-smasher wraps itself in enigma and mystery.
Seen here in archive clips, author Philip K. Dick’s popularisation of genre theories about a potential multi-verse of parallel worlds form a cornerstone of argument that’s rarely been questioned, although one seemingly-baffled man’s emergence from a (reportedly health-related) personal crisis with claims of cosmological visions now looks, in a cynical century decades later, like a headline-grabbing publicity-stunt. Neurotic reactions to intense déjà vu, and fervently grandiose delusions of devout faith, in organised or cult religions, ropes in other extreme possibilities, yet some of the commentators interviewed for this movie’s array of viewpoints appear to confuse possibility with probability.
Although several Twilight Zone (1959-64 ’85-89/ 2002-3/ ’19-20) motifs are hardly even judged as relevant here, Wizard Of Oz (1939) is cited by a clip, while versions of Alice In Wonderland and Lewis’ Narnia books should have got a mention just for adding their own similarly hallucinatory contrivances, and blending blatant fantasy themes into genre lore. Reading such fairy tales while growing up is still a mind-expanding route to appreciations of adults’ genre literature, if not always lessons in worthy moralities and ethical thinking. A notable jumping-on point for V.R. in SF was Daniel Galouye’s 1963 novel Simulacron-3, adapted for German TV as Fassbinder’s World On A Wire (1977), and then filmed as The Thirteenth Floor (1999) by Josef Rusnak. The original Star Trek episode The Cage (1965) can nowadays be easily re-interpreted as a prison in dream-space, while McGoohan’s cult TV series The Prisoner (1967) - especially its ‘western’ styled episode Living In Harmony, offered a proto-VR, that led SF development in Crichton’s theme-park Westworld (1973), and Sasdy’s Welcome To Blood City (1977).
While Disney’s visual futurism in TRON (1982) opened the hidden curtains of cyberspace, Cronenberg’s Videodrome (1982), and his later eXistenZ (1999), exposed the new-fleshy layers of trickery. Trumbull’s Brainstorm (1983) demoed recordings of ecstasy and death, Verhoeven’s surreal spy-fi Total Recall (1990) plugged us into a pseudo-holiday machine. Later, forming a tidal-wave of duplicity or derangement, Bigelow’s millennial actioner Strange Days (1995), Leonard’s unboxed Virtuosity (1995), and Proyas’ nightmare-movie Dark City (1998), explored increasingly dystopian trends, while Carpenter’s witty comedy They Live (1998), expanded from Ray Nelson’s story Eight O’Clock In The Morning (1963, matching Galouye’s book - and completing a 'cyclical' timeline). Media fun, at the expense of ideas, took centre-stage for Weir’s The Truman Show (1998), before the Wachowskis’ The Matrix trilogy (1999-2003) re-articulated most of the SF texts and media that we’d got, so far, into an endlessly-debatable idealistic thriller of humanity unknowingly enslaved by A.I.
When 21st century technology rarely does what it’s actually made to do (and never mind whatever users wish it could do), it’s simply no wonder that a century of SF cinema, plus a lifetime of genre TV shows, and the complexities of game-player media now undermine human (already limited) perceptions of reality. Sometimes when the unreliability of memory, anti-social boredom (factor in the side-effects of drink and drugs), results in a conspiracy theory of global scale (faked missions to the Moon, climate-change denial?), can so easily prompt depressive paranoia, and nihilistic responses, with down-spiral thinking only good for circling the Libertarian drains of social order. (See how easy it is to slip into a ranting mode?) The fascinating subgenre continued in very different ways like Spielberg’s Ready Player One (2018), Finnegan’s horrific Vivarium (2019), and in TV remakes such as Westworld (since 2016).
Peculiarities accumulate, alongside theoretical musings that date back to Plato, instead of studying the undoubted impacts on our consciousness of all these SF ideas from books or media (there are too many exemplars to list here), quite likely to have surprised readers, and stunned watchers, with phildickian concepts they’d never imagined. As previously, in Ascher’s feature-length debut Room 237 (2012), a critical assessment of Kubrick’s iconic horror The Shining (1980), the director’s approach is wholly inconsistent with any typical non-fiction. Digressions and diversions are strewn throughout, and so fairly logical trains of thought often derail into an unfortunate incomprehensibility. Still, this crazy ride to an entirely unreachable destination is worth its sensory-ticket for some remarkably abstract scenery.
