Seemingly set somewhere in a rather bleak near future, Simon keeps working on code for a program. He never quite gets it finished and after continued threats of termination is finally fired. This is the least of his worries.
Every so often he runs out to the store for milk and other items. He doesn't buy all that much, but the prices (in whatever undefined currency) keep on going up. "Twenty-one fifty two" "Thirty-two fifty-two" "Eighty-seven fifty-seven".
Simon seems to have a thing for milk - another resident is big on Kola 500 - and the building super is well-stocked on Farm Cut meat. Why these monomanias, which nobody seems to recognize as such? And what's with all these empty packages arriving anonymously at Simon's?
There seem to be little bits and pieces peeking out from other science fiction works throughout the film:
"You're in the game - do you want to lead, or do you want to follow?" sounds like eXistenZ;
"I can show you things" - shades of Roy Batty's comment to the ocular genetic engineer in Blade Runner -"If you could see what I've seen with your eyes";
the "vision box" seemed somewhat similar to the "Mercer box" in PKD's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?";
the premise of Frederick Pohl's "The Tunnel Under the World" (Alternating Currents) seems to feed into the food monomania(s).
There's a bit of the tension between "there's nothing new under the sun" by the writer of Ecclesiastes and Goethe's "everything has been thought of before; the trouble is to think of it again," throughout the film. I kept wondering if (and hoping that) the film would become more than the sum of its parts.
It had its moments of dry humor - "What happened to your couch? I thought it cleaned itself?"
"It's broken."
No matter how sophisticated technology gets there'll always be a need for repair - no doubt increasing with the complexity of the system.
Detectives stop by to see Simon - he tries to avoid them. He gets the phone call termination: "Simon J.? You're fired." Simon tries to explain the difficulties he's been dealing with - the reasons his work's been delayed. What's this project all about, anyway?
"We only work on a specific part - we don't know the big picture."
Perhaps a few more viewings will put more pieces together.
Every so often he runs out to the store for milk and other items. He doesn't buy all that much, but the prices (in whatever undefined currency) keep on going up. "Twenty-one fifty two" "Thirty-two fifty-two" "Eighty-seven fifty-seven".
Simon seems to have a thing for milk - another resident is big on Kola 500 - and the building super is well-stocked on Farm Cut meat. Why these monomanias, which nobody seems to recognize as such? And what's with all these empty packages arriving anonymously at Simon's?
There seem to be little bits and pieces peeking out from other science fiction works throughout the film:
"You're in the game - do you want to lead, or do you want to follow?" sounds like eXistenZ;
"I can show you things" - shades of Roy Batty's comment to the ocular genetic engineer in Blade Runner -"If you could see what I've seen with your eyes";
the "vision box" seemed somewhat similar to the "Mercer box" in PKD's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?";
the premise of Frederick Pohl's "The Tunnel Under the World" (Alternating Currents) seems to feed into the food monomania(s).
There's a bit of the tension between "there's nothing new under the sun" by the writer of Ecclesiastes and Goethe's "everything has been thought of before; the trouble is to think of it again," throughout the film. I kept wondering if (and hoping that) the film would become more than the sum of its parts.
It had its moments of dry humor - "What happened to your couch? I thought it cleaned itself?"
"It's broken."
No matter how sophisticated technology gets there'll always be a need for repair - no doubt increasing with the complexity of the system.
Detectives stop by to see Simon - he tries to avoid them. He gets the phone call termination: "Simon J.? You're fired." Simon tries to explain the difficulties he's been dealing with - the reasons his work's been delayed. What's this project all about, anyway?
"We only work on a specific part - we don't know the big picture."
Perhaps a few more viewings will put more pieces together.