The Thirteenth Floor: interdimensional mol
The tagline for The Thirteenth Floor is 'You can go there even though it doesn't exist.' As far as things go that don't exist, though, the simulated 1937 we start with is pretty convincing, or, is made even more convincing by Armin Mueller-Stahl's Hannon Fuller character, whose nervous eyes, hesitant accent, and slight bearing seem to somehow fit director Josef Ruznak's 1930s quite properly. Of course, however, Hannon Fuller is nervous for a reason: though the simulation is 'his,' he's nevertheless made some discovery about it, which he must pass on. But there'd be no movie if it was all that easy. Meaning he dies to forward the plot, and with him dies a lot of the potential depth of The Thirteenth Floor--the moral issues etc involved with using this alternate reality as a hedonistic rest stop, where you can have a whole nother identity if you choose. eXistenZ kind of stuff, just without the overt game aspect. Or, Dark City kind of stuff, without the skull-piercing hypodermics. Or, talking the last couple of weeks, Matrix kind of stuff, with a smaller budget and lot more noir.
But back to the plot Hannon Fuller died for, the investigation which results from his death and tries to form the dramatic backbone of the movie. The chief suspect here is research associate / business partner Douglas Hall (Craig Bierko playing Bruce Campbell), who, to clear himself, of course has to go back into the simulation, gumshoe around for clues. Like Mueller-Stahl, too, the costumers make him fit the 1930s very nicely. In fact, he fits there so well he starts having some ontological difficulty, ('what constitutes the real?') so when one of the computer-generated characters (Vincent D'Onofrio) begins acting strangely, as if he might somehow be aware that this is all computer-generated, the simulation starts crumbling. Along with Hall's life, and his chances of getting out of this investigation alive.
His only chance, really, is figuring out what role Fuller's long-lost-and-never-mentioned daughter Jane Fuller (Gretchen Mol) is playing. Or, really, figuring out who she is, if she is, all that fun stuff that goes hand in hand with virtual reality. In the detective drama The Thirteenth Floor is trying hard to emulate, Jane Fuller is the mysterious lady, the trouble-bringer. Meaning of course the two have to fall into bed together, just to settle their differences. And this goes on for a while, perhaps too long, or, definitely too long without some forward movement. But this is an easy mistake to make in noir--more attention given to how the rain looks on the asphalt at night than the dramatic stuff going on. At least there's no voice-over. That would have been too much. Is the ending a surprise, though? In light of eXistenZ, maybe not. Think of it as the Nightmare on Elm Street ending, the one for which Gotcha! had the right title.
Ignoring all the other VR movies for the moment, The Thirteenth Floor is strong; in light of them, however--or, in it's own Pink Floyd tribute-light (lasers, smoke)--things start to feel just a little conventional. The Thirteenth Floor isn't so much a victim of weak movie-making as it is a victim of a burgeoning genre, a genre trying to be both identifiable through a recognizable group of developments and original each time. Thing is, the two don't go hand in hand. Meaning a well-written, well-directed, well-acted movie like The Thirteenth Floor can fail, simply because it's not breaking any new ground. And who knows, perhaps Ruznak was aware of this, and thus made the outer fringes of his simulated world ('the VR-genre') degrade into lines of light, much like Tron, which had the freedom to create the conventions as it went along. The characters in The Thirteenth Floor stare out into that primal, laser-graphed reality with a combination of fear and desire, as if they wonder what might still be out there. The whole genre is wondering with them.
(c) 1999 Stephen Graham Jones, http://www.cinemuck.com
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