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Cube (film)

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.

Cube film - Plot summary

Each cube within the maze 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.

Cube film - Power Struggles and Character Development

The director and writers have stated (On the DVD Commentary) that each of the characters in the film was designed to play through a certain arc of character development. This is presented through many twists in the story and changes in who leads the party of six and who the audience really wants to escape.

Quentin is the character who thrusts himself forwards as the lead and who appears to be the main character as the group assemble. He reveals himself to be a cop and is both strong and level headed, putting himself forward for most of the dangerous tasks and claiming he is looking for 'practical solutions'. However, the film soon reveals (mainly thorugh Quentin's confrontation with Worth in the Red Room) that he is not all who appears. He shows himself to be both violent, especially against women, cruel, especially to Worth, and slightly unhinged with a 'Thing for young girls' as Holloway puts it. As the film transpires and he tries to take control of Leaven (who is generally seen as the most capable of the group) the character becomes more of a villain and is responsible for tearing the group apart as he moves from Hero to Villain.

Holloway is the eldest woman of the group and is a free clinic doctor. Her demeanour shows her at the start to be bitter, paranoid and melodramatic. She is the main source of the conspiracy theories and often states that she thinks the U.S Government is responsible for the Cube. As the film progresses she becomes more human, tending to Quentin's wounds after the 'Sushi Machine Encounter' and being responsible for looking after Kazan when they find him. She also shows herself to be calm when needed and explains to Quentin in the Red Room why they need Worth. She attempts to make a connection with Worth shortly before she tries to reach the outer wall when they are at the edge and is finally killed by Quentin there (realising his change from Hero to Villain) having changed from the most unstable of the group to a pivotal element of calm that opposes Quentin.

Leaven begins the film as the screaming and helpless damsel in distress. Rather than explore her surroundings she begins to scream for help until she attracts Quentin, Halloway and Worth. She is the only member of the group to have any belongings (her glasses) and at first appears to be useless ('I'm nobody, I go to school, I live with my parents; they're just these people. I'm nobody!'). However it quickly becomes clear why she has her glasses with her and she is revealed to be the brains of the group, the only one capable of deciphering the pattern in the numbers (Although Kazan performs her calculations and Worth displays a limited knowledge of the pattern). She forms a friendship with Worth and Kazan and is the most coveted member of the group as both Quentin and the others recognise her as being pivotal to any escape attempt, thus she changes from a damsel in distress to a capable means of escape and the only one who forces Worth to carry on.

Worth's transformation begins with him lying placidly on the ground, injured and grim-looking. He maintains his grim outlook throughout the first part of the film, pausing only to mock Quentin's attempts to leave. He is frequently asked why he even bothers to follow the others and appears to have no reason to live; 'I'm just a guy. I work in an office building doing office building things, ok?'. He functions as nothing but dead weight to the group, capable of doing nothing other than lead Kazan and 'booting' rooms (throwing boots into them to test for motion-sensitive traps). When they reach the Red Room however (shortly after the 'Sushi Machine Trap') Quentin confronts Worth and challenges him. At this point it becomes apparent that Worth worked on designing the outer shell of the cube. He claims to know little about the purpose or construction of the room or about the traps, but did know that people were being put inside for a few months. In the Red Room, Worth reacts to Quentin and explodes in anger as he tells his story. He gives a long, lucid and notable speech about the futility of leadership citing that 'It (The world) is all a headless blunder functioning under the illusion of a master plan. Can you grasp that, Holloway? Big brother is not watching you'. He then says his function in the group is 'The Poison' meaning he sees himself as another obstacle for them to overcome, having no function other than to promote conflict. However, as the film moves on he becomes the replacement hero. He regularly confronts and fights Quentin, engineering plans to disable him. He receives severe beatings and abuse from Quentin and is extremely lucky in avoiding trapped rooms that Quentin throws him into; he rescues Kazan when he is separated from himself and Leaven, and rescues Leaven from Quentin before leading them to the edge. At the end, however, he decides he has nothing to live for and elects to die in the cube when he reaches the exit. 'What is out there?' Leaven asks him, 'Boundless human stupidity' He replies before Leaven is killed by Quentin. He then tackles and kills Quentin before being sealed in the room, thus completeing a move from 'Poison' to Hero and leader.

Rennes, AKA 'The Wren' begins the film by appearing to be the natural reluctant leader and the most able and knowledgeable. He is an escape artist who 'flew the coop' on several major prisons and who develops the method of using a boot to detect traps. He has good senses and is spry for an older man, despite a facial tic or spasm that is never explained. He detects one trap that the boot does not and establishes the philosophy of 'concentrating on what's in front of you' that the group later have to apply. However, despite his apparent knowledge and calm it is whilst becoming involved in the argument and just after saying this that he dies (having broken his own rule to become involved in the petty squabbles of the group). Rennes is killed when acid is sprayed in his face and shows his change from a specialist character and the group's only hope to simply a victim with little use at all.

Kazan shows his change most simply as being the autistic man who seems left only to slow them down. Immediately distrusted by Quentin and almost discarded by Leaven before the 'silence trap' it is presumed he exists either to cripple their speed or to kill them off. However, it transpires that he is a pivotal part of their escape as he is the only one who can complete the calculations needed to reach safety. Over time he changes from a means of slowing them to their embodied ability to move safely.

There is also Alderson, a character who appears at the opening of the film (and on the DVD packaging). This character does not meet up with the rest of the group and is killed in seconds. However, it is set so that he appears to be a main character at the start before dying and being revealed as nothing other than a taste of the carnage to come. There is some speculation as to what "purpose" Alderson was meant to serve should he have survived long enough to meet the group. The fact that the actor who played him was fitted with a headpiece to make the Alderson character shaven-headed and that the group lacks any moral or spiritual authority has led to the notion that Alderson may have been a Buddhist or Catholic monk.

All the characters are named after prisons: Quentin after San Quentin State Prison in California; Holloway after the Holloway Prison in England; Kazan after the prison in Kazan, Russia; Rennes after a prison in Rennes, France; Alderson after the prison in Alderson, West Virginia; Leaven and Worth after the prison in Leavenworth, Kansas.

Not only are the characters named after prisons but they reflect the prisons themselves. Example: Kazan (the mentally challenged character), in Russia is a disorganized prison. Rennes (the "mentor") was a jail that pioneered many of today's prison policies. Quentin (the detective) is known for its brutality. Holloway is a women's prison, and Alderson is a prison where isolation is a common punishment. Leavenworth runs to a rigid set of rules (Leaven's mathematics), and the new prison is corporately owned and built (Worth, hired as an architect).

Cube film - The fatal cubes

The fatal cubes provide an source of extreme stress to the characters, since they not only kill, but kill in an extremely violent, horrific manner.

The fatal cubes encountered by the characters kill in the following ways (method, and character killed (if any) noted:

• A sharp wire mesh that passes through your body, cutting it into squares (killed Alderson)
• A motion-activated flamethrower (successfully avoided by throwing boot into cube)
• Highly corrosive acid sprayed onto face (killed Rennes by completely dissolving his face)
• Sharp wires surround you (think cylinder), then suddenly twist together to slice you into many pieces (think hourglass)(almost killed Quentin, somehow he avoided death, but suffered injury. The characters dubbed this trap the "sushi machine")
• Spikes come out of the walls, ceiling and floor of the entire cube to penetrate your body (this trap was sound activated, and again nearly killed Quentin)

Quentin, upon finding Worth, discussed a trap not seen onscreen which he evaded that nearly decapitated him. It is possible that Quentin's eventual mental breakdown is due in part to the mental stress of triggering and surviving three different fatal cubes.

An additional trap inherent to the puzzle is seen in the characters being separated by the shuffling of the different interchangable cubes, as well as Quentin's eventual horrific death caused by being torn in half between two different cubes that shift.

Holloway is also presumably killed as a result of being deliberately dropped by Quentin from the outer perimeter of the cube structure. She had been sent dangling from a "rope" made from the characters' clothes to try to find an exit. This was before the characters realized that the cubes were dynamic and were changing their configurations. After her death Quentin believed that they could escape by "reaching the bottom" of the large shell the cubes were housed in, and attempted to force Leaven to help him do this by abandoning Worth and Kazan; at this point he was already becoming unhinged.

Some damage is done to the cubes by the characters, consisting of Leaven scratching numbers and diagrams into the metal surfaces of the cubes to attempt to mathematically solve the puzzle, and Quentin somehow forcing off one of the cube door handles to use as a murder weapon to kill Leaven. The characters who are killed also leave their remains inside the cubes they die in (Quentin in two cubes, since he was torn in half). Kazan also urinates in one of the cubes, much to Quentin's disgust. Since no signs of damage or prior deaths are encountered by the characters in their unfortunate misadventure in the cube puzzle, and apparently since people have been put into the cube before, either repairs are made and the human remains are removed before the next group of victims are placed into the cube, or the cubes themselves are self-repairing and cleaning (perhaps via pyrolysis).

Cube film - Purpose of the cube puzzle

The only apparent practical purpose of the cube puzzle seems to be to study human psychology under extreme stress. This also appears to be the subject of the movie.

Artistically, the cube puzzle may be a metaphor for life itself, or the world. Nobody knows why they are alive or on earth, and the wrong decision can get you killed. The cube puzzle just miniaturizes and literalizes these truths in a particularly horrible way.

However, Worth's role as being a designer of the cube system albeit without any real knowledge of the task he had been working on, other than it was a 'good job' at the time, and his argument against the conspiracy theory of Holloway, argues for the film's allegorical point being that we are all trapped in a device of our own making, which was made in ignorance, and ultimately meaningless, however complex and intricate it may appear.

Cube film - 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. Since this task was a time-consuming procedure, the movie was shot not in sequence; all shots taking place in rooms of a specific color were shot one at a time.

Cube film - Sequels

Cube is followed by the sequel Cube 2: Hypercube (2002) and the prequel Cube Zero (2004).

Cube series has more details about how this film relates to the other Cube movies.

Cube film - Cast

• Nicole de Boer as Joan Leaven, a 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 savant
• Julian Richings as Alderson, the first victim.
• Wayne Robson as 'The Wren' Rennes, the fugitive
• Maurice Dean Wint as Quentin, the corrupted 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

Cube film - Similar works

• Saw (film)
• Saw II
• Seven
• Phone Booth
• Mindhunters
• Cube 2: Hypercube
• "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream", a short story by Harlan Ellison.

See also

• Cube series for more details about how this film relates to the other Cube movies.
• List of movies
• Cinema of Canada

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Cube film", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki