The film Existenz fits into Plato’s allegory of the cave as it has many levels or layers parallel to the idea of knowing and not knowing the truth about the cave. The film takes careful precaution as to not show the setting of reality in the movie. We have no idea if this movie is set in the future, or the past, what country it’s in, or what fictional country it’s in, or any characteristic of the normal daily life there. This is to keep us, the audience, in the cave as well.
This film also takes place in a land and time where video games are much more advanced than now, like a distant cousin of virtual reality, but it seems as though it transports the conscious into the game, or as pertaining to this blog post, the cave. The first aspect of the cave is the prisoners being chained and forced to watch the shadows that echo life. In the case of the film existenz, this scenario is represented by the fictional game, Trancendenz. Trancendenz is the first step away from reality, and even symbolizes this aspect of writing directly with the foreign blue plastic binding the people playing the so called game. Trancendenz puts their consciousness into a fictional game world together.
From Trancendenz we go deeper into the cave with the fictional game within a game, Existenz. Existenz is parallel to Trancendenz, the only difference is the “game pod”, to me is more advanced yet more barbaric as these fleshy pods are alive, and connect right into each human. From my perspective, Existenz is almost equal to the shadows, with Trancendenz forming the shadows. Both of these games echo reality, giving a sense of what the world is like when really it is merely a false reflection, and most important of all, not the truth.
From Existenz we are pulled even farther with the mini fleshy game pods. This just yanks us further and further from reality. And throughout the movie, it can be told that many individuals are almost absorbed into these games, such as an addiction. These are the prisoners chained in the cave, living their life through a watered down echo of reality, with absolutely no desire to see reality and know the truth.
Ted Pikul and Allegra Geller represent the philosopher in Plato’s writings. They have seen outside the cave, and lived in beautiful reality and learned the truth, that these games are indeed keeping people back. So their role in this story is parallel to Plato’s writings, they are the philosophers that go back into the cave to try to drag people out. However they don’t really try to get anyone out, instead they kill one of the world famous “game designers” responsible for these games ripping people away from reality.
To sum all this up, the video game players are the prisoners chained in the cage, living their life without knowing the truth, and Allegra and Ted have been outside the cave and have returned to free everyone else by slaughtering the game designer. However the people playing these video games, or in the cave, have no desire to leave this lifestyle and see the so called truth. This film lines up perfectly with Plato and makes me feel like Plato’s writings were an extreme prophesy that fits into every time era, but especially one in the future similar to this.
We won’t talk about how even at the end when we break out of the cave back into reality it seems as though their is another layer of fog keeping them from reality, as it seemed like they were still in the game buffering like the game characters. But that’s not part of the prompt.
Philosophy? 