Cube (movie)
|
|
Cube_The_Movie_Poster_Art.jpg
Cube is a 1997 Canadian sci-fi movie directed by Vincenzo Natali. Seven people, who are complete strangers to each other, awaken inside a maze of cubes with no memory of how they got there. They find each other and are forced to work together to survive while trying to escape and, along the way, they have various (sometimes frightening) personality clashes.
Despite its low budget, the film achieved moderate commercial success and has acquired something of a cult status as a niche science-fiction title. Much of the film's appeal lies in its surreal, almost Kafkaesque setting – no extensive attempt is made to explain what the cube is or why it is created, or why the "inmates" were specifically selected to be imprisoned inside. Although the world "outside" is referred to, it is presented in an extremely abstract fashion as either a dark void or a bright white light.
| Contents |
Plot summary
Each cube is either a safe cube or is equipped with a gruesomely fatal device (e.g. a "sushi machine" that dices the occupant into small pieces or a device that sprays highly acidic liquid onto the occupant). Initially they test each cube they want to enter by first tossing a boot into it. However, this method fails within minutes: Rennes, the 'Wren,' an escape artist who has broken out of six or seven different high-security prisons, dies horribly in a booby-trap the 'boot test' fails to detect.
Leaven, a smart, mathematically-minded young girl, soon discovers that there are clues revealing which rooms are safe to enter: the clues are embedded in the small serial-number-type plaques affixed near the doors of each cube. Each such plaque contains a 3-tuple of three-digit numbers; Leaven's initial conjecture is that a cube is booby-trapped precisely in case one of its three numbers is prime.
Leaven also comes to realize that the numbers represent encoded Cartesian coordinates. Worth, who turns out to have been one of the architects of the cube's outer shell, provides information about the dimensions of that shell (it is 434 feet on a side). Leaven paces off the cubical room and finds that it measures 14 feet on a side internally. Assuming a width equivalent to one cubical room between the large cube and its outer shell, Leaven is able to calculate that the large cube is at most 26 cubical rooms long in each dimension. (Although it is not stated in the film, her calculation appears to assume, apparently correctly, that the outer dimensions of the rooms are about one and a half feet longer than their inner dimensions – i.e. each room measures about 15.5 feet on an external side.) Using the encoded coordinates, she is able to determine that they are just seven rooms from one face of the cube. (It is not made clear how she knows which direction to travel to get there, since the rooms apparently contain no information about their orientation with respect to the axes of the coordinate system.)
However, her conjecture that non-prime-numbered rooms are 'safe' turns out to be incorrect. In fact the deadly cubes are those whose numbers include a power of a prime (including, of course, the first power). Upon this discovery, the prisoners are faced with the task of performing prime factorizations of three-digit numbers – a difficult task in some cases (though not quite as difficult as Leaven presents it to be). Fortunately, it is discovered that Kazan, an autistic savant, can perform such factorizations with ease, announcing the number of (distinct prime) factors each number has almost as quickly as Leaven can read it to him.
Soon, they manage to make their way safely to one face of the cube. Using a rope made from their clothes, they suspend the doctor, Holloway, between their cubical room and the outer wall of the large cube, hoping that she will be able to see a way out. Holloway nearly falls and is caught by Quentin, the apparently good-natured policeman. However, Quentin, who has had a rather vicious falling out with Holloway, deliberately drops her to her death (without the others' being aware that he does so). Quentin then begins to make sexual advances to the young Leaven, and Worth and Quentin fight bloodily.
They come across the dead body of the Wren, realize that they have returned to their original room, and at first believe they have been travelling in circles. But Worth notices that the room that killed the Wren is no longer adjacent to the room they occupy. He and Leaven realize that the rooms must shift their locations over time.
Leaven soon discerns that the sets of numbers on the cubes encode something more than information about their safety and current location: the numbers also signify the permutations the individual cube undergoes as it shifts around inside the large cube. After a few minutes of calculation, Leaven discovers that if they had simply remained in the room in which they met, they would have made it out to the "bridge cube," a single cube connecting the outer shell to the inner cubes. If they wait for the cube to shift, they will be linked to this bridge cube – and the outside world.
Leaven, Worth and Kazan leave Quentin behind, reaching the bridge cube. However, Quentin catches up with them and brutally murders young Leaven with a spike taken from the door handle of one of the cubes. Worth and Quentin fight again. Quentin is killed as he is stuck between the cube corridor and the outer wall, and the bridge cube begins to shift again, with Worth still trapped inside and badly wounded. Worth will thus be unable to escape until the bridge cube next aligns with the exit (which takes a long time; Worth will therefore presumably die inside the cube).
Only Kazan makes it out alive. We do not see the outside world, but we see Kazan walking alone, slowly, into bright light.
Production details
The movie was shot on a Toronto soundstage, only one "cube", measuring 14 by 14 by 14 feet, was built. The color of the room was changed by sliding panels.
Sequels
Cube is followed by the sequel Cube 2: Hypercube (2002) and the prequel Cube Zero (2004).
Cast
- Nicole de Boer as Leaven, college mathematics student
- Nicky Guadagni as Dr. Helen Holloway, a medical doctor
- David Hewlett as David Worth, an architect of the outer shell
- Andrew Miller as Kazan, the autistic man
- Julian Richings as Alderson
- Wayne Robson as Rennes, 'The Wren' convict
- Maurice Dean Wint as Quentin, the cop
All characters were named after real prisons:
- Quentin: San Quentin State Prison in Marin County, California
- Holloway: Holloway Prison in London
- Kazan: Kazan Prison in Russia
- Rennes: Rennes Prison in France
- Alderson: Alderson Federal Prison Camp in Alderson, West Virginia
- Leaven and Worth : the U.S. Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas
See also
External links
- Official Website (http://www.cubethemovie.com)
- Template:Imdb titlede:Cube (Film)