Dicing with death. (Cube (DVD))

Member Name: peel.rebekah

Product:	Cube (DVD)
Date:	28/05/02 (396 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fine 'nasty ends' effects.

Disadvantages: Well bodied actors playing disabled characters always narks me off a bit.

Some things simply have no rhyme or reason - like a mathematically challenging metallic labyrinth floating on the edge of nothingness, or the seemingly haphazard collection of individuals tumbled together inside it, scrambling to find their way out.

Cube was Vincenzo Natali's first long movie (several shorts did the festival rounds), and my what a stonker of a sci-fi cheese flic it was...

*The Film

The opening scene sets the stage for the oppressive and paranoid atmosphere that is about to infuse: A somebody wakes to find himself within the confine of six softly lit, science fictionally augmented and faintly pulsating walls. In his cold confusion he quickens to open one of the six doors that surround him...he opens it and is faced with an identical room, except this one throbs in red; he opens another, the same, but this time in blue; the third, it's orange...he clambers in, he stands and his ears prick up to the sound of a metallic twang...his eyes widen, his body quivers...and then falls to the floor, cubed.

The premise is this: Six other unlucky somebodies are trapped inside this box of lovelies: some of the chambers are booby trapped with sensors and nasty ends aplenty, and somehow the six somebodies have to work out the connections between themselves and the machine maze that confines them.

The movie begins with five of the six falling in on each other: a black policeman, a female doctor, a convicted escapee, a teenage schoolgirl and a white collar nobody. Their characters are set up as caricatures, unsettling parodies of themselves and what we expect them to be: the black policeman indicates from the very start that he's the hero running this show; the cock-sure escapee has such obvious and cheesy dialogue that we just know that he'll be the first to go; the paranoid doctor, who revels in the suspicion that this is all a government cover-up; the pathetic and feeble schoolgirl who hides in her adolesc
ent angst...and of course the nobody, who's giving nothing away...just enough nothing so that are suspicions are raised.

The group discover that there is a relevance in the large numbers that detail each room and in each and every characters' own knowledge...but after the inevitable loss of the escapee, a new quandary is thrown into the conundrum in the form of an autistic adult male. What can he possibly add to this situation? Surely he can only be a hindrance in this fight for survival; perhaps, after all, not everything has a reason for being.

They have only until their strength and mental aptitude weaken to work out this hi-tec warren, and to save themselves from...each other?

*The Acting...

Is pretty weak, it has to be said, but on a Canadian sci-fi/horror film with absolutely no budget left over from the one set that is used throughout, what in hell do you expect? Although the acting and the script have a rather stiltonesque aroma, the basic scenario and set up of the characters does manage to win through. What I mean by this is that the slow character assassination that occurs with the mental disintegration of the players is a lot more interesting than the acting itself: the audience is given the cheesy stereotypes that we are so used to seeing, and then we get to see behind the masks, into the flesh and deep into the madness.

Each character has a moment of 'falling apart', and this is probably their finest hour. By far the most entertaining deterioration is that of the supposed hero: stereotypical to the hilt, he begins his portrayal as an all round wholesome good guy, out to save the world and his kids from the bad guy.

As the film progresses we become aware of his sleazy overprotection of the young girl - he begins to get a little friendlier than a father figure should. Slowly his need for control/power over the situation amplifies into an aggression, then into a manic anger and physica
l violence as it dawns on him that things are no longer under his command. Through this sequence the audience also discovers the real nature of the character: a wife and child beater? A dirty old man? A delusional control freak? And so our obvious hero becomes the very epitome of what he should be protecting us from by the end of the film.

*The Direction...

The film feels like it's been a long time coming - incredibly well thought out and thorough - one wishes that perhaps Natali had waited for a little more funding, that's all. All the threads hang together rather nicely, without being too obvious from the very beginning. The characters are chosen because of our familiarity with them from other movie portrayals - interesting idea this, as then the audience (and Natali) can bypass the basic introduction of who's who. With that in mind, it's then easier for us (and Natali) to get on and deconstruct/disintegrate the characters within the context of this film.

The underlying theme of pointlessness and of nihilism that human life constantly negates in the search for reason is uncomfortable, a little too close to the bone. It's us trying to rationalise that Frakenstein's monster existed without Victor ever intentionally making it; the search for a God machine that we built ourselves, but forgot about. Natali's reiteration that it just may be possible that there is nothing else out there is spine-chilling, but I feel he somewhat destroys this message by the compromising near-death-experience ending.

It must have been a hard movie to direct; not easy to make a movie that avoided answering all the obvious questions like why? where? and when?; it must have also been difficult to create the ambience that broke down these characters. Natali must have seen the image very clearly, and for that he must be commended...as must the decor team, who made one set and a collection of coloured lights carry a movie up, up and
away from a B grade.

*My Sentiments.

Big love. Definitely a director to keep an eye on.

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