Review of eXistenZ (1999) by Paul Z — 06 Jul 2008

EXistenZ is a crescendo in Cronenberg's style. His films are always emotional, but not in the sense of a tear-jerker or a melodrama. His emotion comes from a vivid portrayal of the more sensual, sensitive, mood-oriented perspective of life, perhaps like life in a dream. eXistenZ explores two people entering a virtual reality game and feeling it like one would a dream if one could remember every nuance of a dream like one can with conscious life. But mysteriously, every scene feels warmly insulated, like there is no such thing as life outside of a particular interior setting or like the characters in the scene are the only ones in the world as far as we are concerned. Cronenberg thrives on extreme sensitivity, and eXistenZ is a perfectly tailored fit for a filmmaker like him.

The film avoids every dull cliché of the technological thriller, as even the mechanisms and objects involving playing the game, even guns, are all somehow living. They are made of flesh, they pulsate. The music by Howard Shore, as you can expect from any Cronenberg film, is intensely moving, the personification of moving under dark water. You see, the way I'm describing my thoughts on this film are the only way I can think of to truly communicate what I mean. The film's effect is so deeply inherent and invertedly emotional that one cannot truly do it justice without talking about it as if one were writing prose.

Jude Law and Jennifer Jason Leigh are wonderful as the two lead characters, mustering every ounce of duplicity they're capable of to successfully portray the affected archs of their characters in the story. Also, Jennifer Jason Leigh is so incredibly sexy in this film that one almost needs a mandatory towel to wipe away the sweat.