Exploring Identity and Consequences: A Deep Dive into “Infinity Pool” (2023). Film Review.
Infinity Pool really impressed me. A particular impression for the first time in quite some time. Cronenberg Jr. has made a psychedelic (but moderately) hodgepodge that is not so easy to take apart. If you take as a basis a dry plot and give it to someone else for realization, this film could have become science fiction, comedy, thriller and anything else, but to make it a psychological horror with a bias in existential reflections …. that’s a lot of work !
The main characters, James and Em Foster, head to a luxury resort in the fictional country of Li Tolqa to save their marriage. However, their perfect vacation quickly turns into a nightmare when James hits a local man with his car. The country has a strange law: you can pay for a crime, but the criminal must watch his execution carried out by his clone.
Without going into spoilers, I can suggest a few topics for discussion. The first is krim & panischment or crime and punishment — which is one of the framing lines of the story. The essence, in general, is always the same: is it possible to avoid punishment in any of its forms if one is brought up in the logic of the paradigm “one must answer for one’s actions”, although it is not entirely clear why one must answer, to whom, when and to what extent? But, apparently, it is a matter of who exactly is to blame — there the guilty will figure it out for themselves. Some, for example, continue to enjoy all the joys of life as if nothing had happened, while others plunge into a real personal hell (both variants we can observe in the movie).
Infinity Pool also touches on the problem of self-identity. The challenge is as follows: James, the protagonist, who considers himself a writer by vocation, a few years ago, by some miracle gave birth to a single book that failed to find success with readers, and since then has been in despondency and in a creative crisis. But in fact James is nothing more than an empty, mediocre, living a life that is not his own, but he himself does not know it yet. Question: why did James decide he was a writer and, most importantly, what would be left of his identity if he gave up the idea? Who is James? Who is he really? And also — who is each of us, dear subscribers ?
And what price James has to pay to find the “lost” inspiration (was it even there to lose?), I suggest you see for yourself. And then, as usual, write me your opinion about it all.
