comments

1. Kelsey Parker on September 21st, 2009 at 5:55 pm

   Oh I thought that movie was awful, but I’m biased. Jude Law makes me want to shove carrots in my eyes.

2. Sheila Ryan on September 21st, 2009 at 5:59 pm

   Kelsey! Where did you get the notion of shoving carrots in your eyes? From a David Cronenberg film?

   I am the only person I know who likes eXistenZ.

   Practically the only person I know who likes Cronenberg.

3. Kelsey Parker on September 21st, 2009 at 6:03 pm

   Well, Nina does like to whip her dinner around when she’s thrilled to be eating it. I probably got the idea from the number of times she’s squared me right in the jaw.

   I watched eXistenZ so many, many years ago that I don’t remember what in particular set me off, though the feeling of NO is still strong.

4. Sheila Ryan on September 21st, 2009 at 6:04 pm

   I don’t especially like Jude Law either, but I kind of regard his presence in this film as I do that of Ryan O’Neal in Barry Lyndon.

   I’m not much into naturalism, as you may have guessed.

5. Sheila Ryan on September 21st, 2009 at 6:22 pm

   Kelsey, was it the shuddersome aspects or the watered-down sci-fi-philosophical hooey?

   The shuddersome is so critical to Cronenberg’s aesthetic — but I can understand its being too much to take.

   As for the hooey, I’m not keen on Ideas in Art — but yoicks! eXistenz was levels above 1999′s The Matrix in that department.

   Cronenberg is certainly visceral. What I like about his films is the way they hit me viscerally and intellectually.

6. Chris on September 22nd, 2009 at 9:39 am

   I absolutely loved eXistenz, I did a chapter on it long ago for my dissertation. I haven’t seen that film in way too long – thanks for the reminder!

   None of my friends liked it on first viewing though, and I’m trying to remember the argument I marshalled that turned a few of them around. But it’s escaping me for the moment. Maybe once I watch it again it’ll come back to me.

7. Sheila Ryan on September 22nd, 2009 at 9:51 am

   Ha! That makes two of us, Chris!

   I first saw eXistenZ in an empty (and frosty) cinema in the southernmost reaches of Las Vegas on a scorching mid-summer afternoon. The young ticket-taker told me that he didn’t like it it and that The Matrix was, like, way better

8. Kelsey Parker on September 22nd, 2009 at 3:55 pm

   I had to look up the plot to remind myself and alas, a movie review jogged my memory:

   The intersection of the sexual, the mechanical and the monstrous has always obsessed Cronenberg, and these ports — artificial sphincters on the lower spine that nobody seems to be able to keep a moistened finger out of — fall somewhere between the erotic and the awful.

   I was 15 when I saw this movie, which means I was barely comfortable with my own body let alone the fanciful elaborations of others. I should watch it again, now that I’m a flocker. Y’all have done nothin’ if not made me more comfortable talking about shit.

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