Of course, like any closed off, impossibly callous person, Nicholas van Orton (Michael Douglas) suffered an unforgettable trauma in his childhood: bearing witness to the suicide of his father at forty-eight years old when he caught sight of him just as he was about to jump off the roof of their estate at “2210 Broadway” (when, in fact, it is the Filoli Mansion thirty miles outside of San Francisco). The very estate Nicholas ends up inheriting as he comes into his own as a rich and ruthless investment banker, caught up entirely in the amassing of wealth in addition to falling headfirst into the same workaholic tendencies his father did as a means to escape from reality (in this way, Nicholas’ motives for avarice differ greatly from Douglas’ other infamous material-hungry character, Gordon Gekko). Not fathoming just yet that the desire to escape from reality can be a very dangerous thing.
His ex-wife, Elizabeth (Anna Katarina), still tries to keep a friendly relationship as a sign of her continued affection for him despite marrying another man and having children, but is consistently met with his cold, unmoved disposition. Particularly on his own forty-eighth birthday, when she calls to wish him well, knowing that this must be an especially hard one for him considering it’s when his own father died (a sort of “Jesus age” it is when we reach the same year one of our parents did when they died). He balks at her, essentially saying he wouldn’t have thought about it had she not reminded him. But of course that’s not true, for there’s not a day that goes by when he doesn’t think about it. And he’s reminded once more of the shock when his brother, Conrad a.k.a. “Connie” (Sean Penn), turns up in town to wish him happy birthday, further iterating just how momentous this milestone is as he insists that Nicholas take him up on his gift. A gift that Conrad insists, with the utmost graveness and sincerity, will change his life. With that, he hands him a card with the information of Consumer Recreation Services (CRS) on it, begging Nick that he’ll promise to call. He agrees, only as a means to get his brother out of his hair.
But it is after that clipped conversation with his wife on the phone as he sits alone in his gilded compound that something inside him says, “What the hell, why not?” as he decides to give the CRS thing a try when he “happens upon” its headquarters, taking the elevator to the fourteenth floor to investigate this mysterious entity his brother claims will offer him a “profound life experience”–something that’s obviously been missing from his existence since, well, his father jumped off the roof in front of him. In that moment, some part of Nicholas died as well, only to be resuscitated by this “game.” As vague and unknowable, it seems, to CRS itself. For when Jim Feingold (James Rebhorn), the “head” of the operation, tries to explain what it is to Nicholas, the best he can offer is: “The Game is tailored specifically to each participant. Think of it as a great vacation, except you don’t go to it, it comes to you.” Sounds like quarantine.
In many regards, the way Nicholas’ life plays out afterward is similar to the “what’s real and what isn’t?” quality of Total Recall, based, naturally, on a Philip K. Dick short story (called “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale”). Indeed, the Dickian nature of the premise speaks to the main character being forced to question his precious, comfortable world as it becomes glaringly apparent that the scope of external forces manipulating his so-called “reality” are so vast, he can’t really trust anyone. Though, of course, he still trusts Conrad. Enough to go through with CRS’ preliminary examination, consisting of psychological and physical tests that, according to Feingold, will help CRS determine the best way for the game to engage with him on the most challenging and pertinent levels possible.
After being told that he’s been rejected from the program, the same evening, what appears to be a corpse shows up on his driveway (instantly conjuring a parallel to his father’s position after falling from the roof). It turns out, instead, to be a clown–a fitting symbol for us all–which Nicholas brings inside as he turns on the TV to watch his usual financial news roundup. But something is off about commentator Daniel Schorr as he deviates from his usual staid lines, saying things like, “A staggering 57 percent of American workers believe that there is a very real chance they will be unemployed in the next five to seven years… But what does that matter to a bloated millionaire fat cat like you?” Of course, Nicholas can’t believe it. How could Daniel Schorr possibly be addressing him directly? But he is. And it is this specific “fat cat” accusation that serves as the underpinning theme of the movie. For Nicholas must come to understand how the other half (or, rather, 99%) lives in order to achieve the catharsis of The Game (would that the rest of the capitalists could have such an epiphany during this coronavirus reckoning serving to accent class divide as never before). Or so it would seem until Conrad informs his brother that CRS is one giant scam artist who keeps harassing him for more money. Soon, Connie doesn’t even trust that his brother isn’t in on the whole thing as he runs in terror and rage from him through the streets of San Francisco.
Nicholas, meanwhile, continues to be in disbelief that The Game could possibly have this much far-reaching power to manipulate every situation. Like getting a waitress named Christine (Deborah Kara Unger) at his go-to expensive restaurant to spill drinks on him so that she ends up being fired and then told by another waiter via a note, “Don’t let her get away.” Now attached to Christine and her “average person” know-how with regard to navigating the streets as they accidentally break into buildings and flee cops, he awakens the following morning to put the pieces together that, according to some lurid Polaroids, he spent the night in a hotel room with her. Or was it Conrad? With his ever-diminishing grasp on understanding what is part of CRS’ carefully manipulated fiction and what isn’t, Nicholas’ heavily monitored rat in cage existence starts to feel like, well, ours. And sure, coronavirus is real. Maybe just one of those classic examples of someone forgetting to turn the stove burner off when they should have and the whole fucking house ends up in flames. Maybe manufactured in a lab. We’ll probably never know what actually went down. Regardless of how it came to be, the CRS-like power it has lent governments the world over (in this analogy, one supposes that makes Sean Penn’s character the coronavirusesque agent for grabbing said power) has led many non-lemmings to that eternal Philip K. Dick “paranoid” question: What is real and what isn’t? How much of the response is tailored to our “safety” versus the hard-on politicians get from control and manipulation?
Is this all at least partially a sick (pun intended) and elaborate ploy to keep people inside complacently chewing cud? A twisted, sadistic game on the part of the government to see how far they can test the levels of obedience as they secretly conspire to bring about the full-fledged dictatorial New World Order? Time, as usual, probably won’t tell. One only wishes we had the more tongue-in-cheek tone of David Fincher’s directorial style, paired with Harris Savides’ cinematography (the very kind that also punctuated Fiona Apple’s “Criminal” video the same year) to make it all slightly more bearable. And, well, more interesting. Instead, the backdrop of our “conspiracy” has been reduced to our homes’ respective transformation into prisons as we wait for Sean Penn to pop out and yell, “Psych!”
