Vivarium.
Imogen Poots stars as Jemma, alongside Jesse Eisenberg as Jesse Eisenberg in this well crafted contribution to the popular and well established horror/mystery/Kafkaesque/existential dread/psychological noir genre.
I really like Imogen Poots, and she is pootsy as hell in this film. Her gorgeous 'girl next door' look works perfectly in every frame. Jesse Eisenberg puts in the hard yards as a slightly toned down version of himself.
The story starts with Jemma and Jesse accepting an offer to visit some display homes. They follow the salesman to an estate that's so new, the roads don't even have signs yet. The houses are nice enough, but every one is identical. Curiously, they're all painted in the same shades of green. The whole situation is a very weird, but they roll with it until... well, you'll need to watch the movie to find out.
Vivarium is arguably the best interpretation of Franz Kafka's work to date, and draws upon two of his most well known quotes:
Franz Kafka said:
Better to have, and not need, than to need, and not have.
Franz Kafka said:
I am constantly trying to communicate something incommunicable, to explain something inexplicable, to tell about something I only feel in my bones and which can only be experienced in those bones. Basically it is nothing other than this fear we have so often talked about, but fear spread to everything, fear of the greatest as of the smallest, fear, paralysing fear of pronouncing a word, although this fear may not only be fear but also a longing for something greater than all that is fearful.
Kafka himself was a poor interpreter of his own work, which he rarely studied and often misunderstood. This is why films like
Vivarium are so necessary.
Jemma and Jesse are defined not by their characters, but by their relationship and its uneasy dynamic. The arrival of a newcomer is destabilising because they cannot adapt to a situation over which they have no control. Jemma's realisation of this fact is neatly articulated in Act 2, when she says 'Believing in progress does not mean believing that any progress has yet been made.'
It is only much later in the film that they finally realise they are free, and this is why they are lost. As Jesse says in Act 3, 'I am in chains. Don't touch my chains.' It's a powerful and highly relatable metaphor.
Vivarium was brought to the big screen by Lovely Productions (in association with Fantastic Films, Frakas Productions, PingPongFilm and XYZ Films) on a tiny budget of $4 million, most of which came from a grant donated by Deutsche Telefunken. Its high production values confirm that the money was well spent.
I rate
Vivarium at 29.97 on the Haglee Scale, which works out as a Kafkaesque 8/10 on IMDB.
