eXistenZ (1999)

eXistenZ: Directed by David Cronenberg. With Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jude Law, Ian Holm, Willem Dafoe. A game designer on the run from assassins must play her latest virtual reality creation with a marketing trainee to determine if the game has been damaged.

“David Cronenberg is doubtlessly one of the greatest directors alive and in activity (along with Lynch, Kiarostami, Kitano, Moretti, Oliveira, Rohmer, etc). Having seen almost all of his films (excluding u0026quot;Dead Zoneu0026quot;, u0026quot;The Flyu0026quot; and u0026quot;M.Butterflyu0026quot;), I have this somewhat rare opinion that u0026quot;eXistenZu0026quot; is one of his masterpieces. It seems to me that this film was hugely misunderstood, culminating with the stupid idea of comparing this film to u0026quot;Matrixu0026quot;, a rather worthless and meaningless piece of nonsense. Here in u0026quot;eXistenZu0026quot;, we have instead a very dense and deep meditation on the mystery of reality, of our inability to apprehend where do things come from. The characters appear and disappear as if moved by some mysterious agent, which remains inhapreenshible. Being Cronenberg a professed atheist, we can only arrive at the conclusion that each world which is presented to us and to the main characters comes from their own mind, which, nevertheless, only constitutes a part of the human body (it is now hazard that the characters have access to the game by means of something – a game pod – which is implanted into their bodies). Cronenberg stated many years ago that all reality is virtual; so, in this film, the use of the plot-device of virtual reality is a huge metaphor to the virtually of reality, as our director sees it.”