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 ube" is a strange, but good, movie. It's one
of the more creative movies I've seen in a long time. The film is Canadian in
origin, and was finished, I believed, with the help of money raised to help
Canadian filmmakers. I'm sure there's a name for this particular program, but it escapes me
at the moment.
There is actually only one set
for "Cube" -- the cube-shaped prison cell of the title -- which is
redressed each time to give the impression of more than one cube connected to a
multitude of others. The movie concentrates on character interactions and on
the question of just how much creativity can the director throw at us without
giving away that the film is a low-budget experience. Because of its
limitations, the movie has very
little plot, and what plot there is is paper thin at best, nonexistent at
worst.
Characters, each
with different talents, wake up to find themselves in the cube prison without
knowing why they are there, or even where "there" is, and must combine
their unique talents to escape -- if they can escape at all. One is a pretty
young math student (Nicole de Boer); an autistic adult who can make difficult calculations
in a heartbeat; an aggressive cop; another is a
nurse that stands up for the autistic; and another man has secrets concerning
the construction of the cube -- he was one of its builders!
As a low-budget production, "Cube" is a very
impressive and ambitious film. It's fantastic how the director and his set designers
manage to turn each subsequent cube that our players find themselves in look
different each time. Mind you, there isn't anything fancy about the
"different" cubes themselves, but merely the
changing of background colors and a few modifications here and there. Plus, each
cube is booby trapped with lethal devices like lasers that slices a man into
multiple pieces, which means our players must find ways around these death
traps. Surprisingly, a simple shoe becomes the tool of salvation.
"Cube" is interesting in that it attempts to be very
intelligent with its puzzles, even though its entire premise (why have
they been imprisoned in the first place?) is rather weak. That is, if the film
bothers to tackle the question to begin with. (Not that it matters, natch.)
Which brings me to the film's weakest moment. The ending. I'm not sure what
director Natali and his writers were thinking, but the
ending sequence completely undermines all the intellectual challenges that were established in the movie
prior to that one moment. The complex sequence of prime numbers that the
characters are forced to deal with, the gauging of what trap lies in each subsequent cubes, the getting around
said traps... All of that is thrown out the window in favor of a cheap scare
that doesn't even scare as much as it annoys.
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