Cube
This film adaptation of Sigmund Freud’s early novel, “Civilization and Its Discontents” takes us on a frightening journey through the twisted and confusing (but ultimately decipherable) labyrinth that is the human psyche. Of course the possibility of actually figuring out the workings of the human mind is a throwback to Freud’s theory that such a task was actually possible. However, within the film itself, the characters (each of them representing one of Frued’s basic drives) come to understand that there is no ultimate order to the world they inhabit. This is an odd dichotomy: at the same time the immediate world is, if brutal and terrifying, in some way comprehensible while the reasons for which this immediate world exists are completely irrational, based in a willful ignorance and lack of purpose.
In addition to Freud’s basic psychological concepts, that of the Urvater, the death drive, the Id, the Ego and Superego, the film presents the idea that while the application of reason is useful to solve problems in the most immediate sense, the ultimate escape from those problems is facilitated by a sort of Zen-like transcendence of rational thought. This is to say, that while the basic human drives struggle for dominance in a simultaneous need for understanding, sex, domination, protection and procreation, what is ultimately necessary to move beyond the problems created by the conflict between these needs is a rejection or absence of all of these human desires. Of course, without the drive to satisfy these needs, one would not survive for very long at all. Therein lies the paradox. As long as we seek to satisfy immediate hungers and desires, we will remain trapped in a world of conflict created by those desires. In order to survive, we lead ourselves into destruction, but in order to escape the cycle of destruction, we must relinquish our desire to survive. It almost makes one want to just sit under a tree, perhaps for several days...
Oh, and there’s like, some people in a death trap that cant get along. 5 stars.