Cube: Thinking Outside the Box
A cast of six protagonists, a single set of which Rubik would be proud, and a group of Canadian first-time film-makers designing a project which became a most unexpected commercial success. The DVD commentary of this movie is jaunty and hilarious as the creators joke about doors that wouldn’t open, fake body parts left lying about, and the shoestring budget on which the film was made. What they don’t tell you is perhaps what we most want to know – what is the cube? The characters speculate wildly during their traumatic journey through the physical and psychological maze of the movie, but perhaps one of the most extraordinary things about the film is how satisfying a less ‘realistic’ reading can be.
But let us begin as we spin the lever and slide down the heavy door into the next room of this huge maze. No smell of gas or sound or sight of a trap: the serial numbers are prime, and the boot we tossed in has been retrieved unscathed. Whose turn is it to climb warily into an ominous 14’ by 14’ box of a room with eerily patterned walls and lit in vivid colours, and check if it’s ‘safe’?
Seven total strangers have awoken in a terrifying environment that seems to be some kind of enormous and deadly labyrinth made up entirely of these menacing cube-like rooms. Theories are rife: some kind of alien abduction perhaps? The design is certainly uncanny and inhuman, and the cross-section of characters diverse enough. But perhaps that is just too far-fetched – more likely it is a government conspiracy or some form of military training exercise. That might explain Quentin’s presence as a policeman or maths genius Leaven, but hardly accounts for Worth, the despondent office worker. Holloway the doctor wails in despair “Are we being punished?”, and therefore is the hive-like construction a prison and are there more unknown criminals among the group besides Rennes the escape artist? Surely not Kazan, the gentle and autistic child-man. This is a science experiment then, or some “rich psycho’s entertainment” – a rat race, ‘Survivor’ in a box, a disturbing game of wits and violence.
Such are the ideas the characters struggle with during the course of the movie, until the sensational confession of Worth that he helped design the Cube. He doesn’t know who he was working for, or the purpose behind the project, but he did know people were being let loose inside it, and that its creation was the work of many equally innocent people. His revelation therefore doesn’t negate any of the previous theories, but what he suggests is even more frightening than anything proposed thus far. He believes the Cube no longer has a purpose. If it once did, it has become “mis-communicated, or lost in the shuffle”, like a single room milling about in the machinations of the maze. So what is really frightening is that “Nobody is in charge… Big Brother is not watching you.” The cogs of the project continue to turn as people continue to be abducted and released into the hell of the labyrinth, but no-one knows or cares what the object was anymore. No reason, no purpose, no congratulations for the winner, no rescues for the survivors. No point.
But the will to survive persists, and when the only survivor reaches the bridge to freedom and steps out into the harsh white light, just what is awaiting him beyond the confines of the Cube?
On the threshold of success, Leaven hesitantly asks the same question, and despite a cynical answer from Worth, is resignedly hopeful:
“What is out there?”
“Boundless human stupidity.”
“I can live with that.”
But of course, she can’t, because she is promptly killed by a rampaging psychopath… Does that mean Worth was wrong and there’s something else outside the Cube? Or that we can’t in fact live with the stupidity of humanity, and having let it kill the rest of the prisoners, we are sending our last survivor out into it, and thus to their doom? Like the pre-credit sequence as Alderson steps naively into a new room, is Kazam walking into another death trap?
We’re not given enough information to have a definitive ‘realistic’ answer. Director Vincenzo Natali quips that he refused to make ‘Die Hard in a box’. With no context, no prologue and no epilogue, the audience must go away wondering, and debating, and making up their own minds. However, there is another level of meaning we can unpack from the box that opens up some new possibilities for exploring outside the square…
Consider this. The cube isn’t a separate entity created by an autonomous force; it is a metonym: a small part that stands for a whole, a unit that represents, encompasses, is the world. A basic geometric shape standing in the void of its own universe, while its scattered populace stumbles about in search of answers. The characters are not only a representative cross-section of society in the world, but they are allegorical – they represent facets of humanity. Compassion, reason, violence, innocence, heroism, mediocrity: the inhabitants of the cube are less individuals than a collective depiction of that ‘boundless human stupidity’ and its triumph or tragedy.
The clue to a symbolic reading of the characters comes from their names; each is named after a famous prison, and each prison corresponds to a driving force in their personalities. Holloway is a woman’s prison, while Rennes was a pioneering gaol. Alderson is prone to use isolation as punishment, and Kazan in Russia is renowned for being disorganized. Finally, Quentin is infamous for its brutality, and Leavenworth for its corporate organization and strict rules and regulations. The characters are thus imprisoned in this world that is actually both their own world and a part of them.
As a metaphor for modern ‘civilisation’, the Cube is a mechanical, problematic environment: technologically superior but constantly unpredictable and organic. Deaths and triumphant discoveries are equally unexpected, as the travelers attempt to give themselves purpose and direction but are constantly thwarted by chance and their own human characteristics. The theme of the apparently random revealing hidden patterns (as shown by the opening titles) is everywhere in the movie, both literally and figuratively. The elaborate and haphazard decorations on the walls hide numerous devices and traps, the serial numbers for the rooms constantly reveal themselves as part of ever more complex mathematical patterns. Leaven’s glasses, carefully left with her that she may perform the calculations needed to dissect the puzzle, also give a little visual homage to the famous text Lord of the Flies when their breaking marks the beginning of the chaos and descent into madness and inhumanity and also the terrible irony when revealing the survivors have come literally and metaphorically full circle in their effort to escape.
Moreover, the coloured rooms stimulate human emotions and moods that not only affect the protagonists, but also come to reflect them. Little wonder Kazan doesn’t like the red rooms that promote violence and hysteria, but prefers the calming silence of blue rooms. His own colour is the closing tabula rasa of pure clinical white: the blank canvas upon which the fate of the human race will be written. Humanity is offered a new start as the brilliant, naïve child stumbles towards an unknown future – what we must decide is whether he steps out into freedom as our saviour, or doom as a victim of our boundless stupidity.
Historically, perhaps anyone who has stepped outside the box is liable to be both.
