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movie news
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Wed. 08 29. 2007 8:00 AM EDT
Ryan Reynolds Questions Our Existence In 'The Nines'
Writer/director John August brings contemporary video game twist to longstanding philosophical debate.
by
Shawn Adler
Ryan Reynolds in "The Nines"
(
Will Mcgarry/ New Market
)
It was halfway through our interview when the typically affable Ryan Reynolds turned into a regular Voltaire:
"What if we were all just pawns in someone else's game? What if somebody's just playing us?" he asked, his face scrunched up in
altar-boy sincerity. "What if somebody invented us on a whim?"
It was the type of collegiate philosophizing that seems somehow out of place anywhere but in a dorm room plastered with Bob Marley posters. But what made Reynolds' questions so bizarrely interesting wasn't that they had to do with his new movie, "The Nines." No, what made them so interesting — and so surprising — was that Reynolds wasn't asking them rhetorically.
"That is really a question," he said, leaning in. "What's this little experiment [life] gonna turn out like?"
Welcome to a world where the guy who played Van Wilder invites you to ponder the deeper mysteries of life, the universe and everything. Welcome to the world of "The Nines," writer/director John August's sometimes whimsical but always earnest contribution to what's known in philosophy circles as the "brain in a vat" debate, a conundrum that's occupied history's greatest minds, from René Descartes (in "Meditations on First Philosophy") to Keanu Reeves (in "The Matrix: Revolutions").
What if our brains were plugged into some type of computer program that only simulated what we experienced? What if the world we've come to accept as real weren't really real at all?
For August, that question comes with a twist.
"Generally most of the narratives that involve some sort of alternative reality, someone is a helpless captive to it. I wanted to turn that on its head," August said of the film, which enslaves its hero in a video game reality he helped create. "What if the protagonist who was ultimately powerful and in charge of this universe that we're seeing — what would his experience be like?"
August said the answer is obvious to anyone who's ever gotten stuck playing marathon sessions of "World of Warcraft" or "Dungeons & Dragons."
"This is a guy who essentially built this world and is not content to just watch it but wants to play it. He plays it so long that he forgets who he is," August revealed. "I think part of the reason why video games are so addictive is because you get a firsthand experience of seeing a new creation and getting to run around in that world, and it's simpler and more rewarding than real life."
But it isn't just one reality that Reynolds gets stuck in. The 30-year-old actor plays three different characters in the film: a television star, a video game designer and a writer. They all share certain attributes, meet similar people (Melissa McCarthy, Hope Davis and Elle Fanning also play multiple characters) and intersect with the others in bold-yet-mysterious ways — here as a seeming phantom, there as a televised prophecy. And everywhere the number nine throbs in the background, a talisman reminding Reynolds of something forgotten, something beyond his grasp.
On top of all this, August actually based one of the Reynolds characters on himself, creating some kind of meta-comment on the dual role of creator and creation (and causing more than a few heads to explode in the process).
"I really enjoyed smudging the lines between what was the movie and what was the real world," August said, laughing.
"You just kind of have to take it step by step, day by day — focus on each character as it presented itself," Reynolds said. "[Otherwise] you'd go crazy."
Which would be OK by August, he said — you're meant to.
"When I do Q&A's, I try to remind the audience that if you're feeling a little betwixt as the movie ends, that's OK. Just roll with it," the screenwriter said of the plot's initial ambiguity. "There's this thing going on in American movies that if you don't have a firm opinion about a movie by the end credits then something's wrong. I just reject that as an idea."
But what of his star's idea that we're all pawns in someone else's game, all being played by some malevolent creator? As a writer, "I know about the responsibility to what I've created," August acknowledged, but "choose to think it doesn't matter.
"Ultimately we'll never be able to know if our reality is 'reality,' or if it's a simulation," August said, taking each of Reynolds' questions at face value. "I think you have to treat the world as if it's as real as it can be — that it's the best of all possible worlds."
This report is from MTV News.
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