terry yakamoto

Surreal and unsettling, Vivarium was certainly not written to court popularity or pander to its audience. Rather, it has an attitude that shouts, "this is what I've got to say about modern existence, like it, or do one". From the early scene of a recently hatched bird dying on the ground, grotesque imagery is used to slap you awake to it's brutal take on modern life. We see the creepy inhuman estate agent who represents cold impersonal consumerism, then the bland identikit housing estate that represents social conformity which is impossible to escape from. Everything is an analogy of modern life, viewed from the outside looking in, through cynical eyes from a haughty perch of arrogance. Unexpectedly, halfway through the film, the couple suddenly find themselves with a child, indicative of how at moments in our lives we suddenly ponder on how we got where we are, as if we awaken temporarily before drifting back into the fog of living. The child seems alien and imponderable, selfishly demanding resources but offering little in return, highlighting our own inherent loneliness and sense of alienation, even amongst our own kin. Yet, the grimmest element is Eisenberg's demise. Relentlessly digging a hole, meaningless, joyless, like how we spend our lives working to distract ourselves from the insignificance and pointlessness of our existence until it's almost gone and we die. The film is a look at our lives within the vivarium of modern life, harking to the existentialist tradition, it deconstructs our lives from the outside looking in. The fact that this film has received so many poor reviews is indicative of how difficult it is to suddenly accept that the hole you yourself have been digging, ultimately has no meaning. Your identikit house is not a castle but a prison, your children are mere parasites, a selfish folly on your part that you must placate. But in the depths of the gloom of realising the meaningless of existence comes freedom and empowerment. Instead of working hard to buy a new car, or a handbag, or the latest Chinese-made plastic thing that your ungrateful child demands, instead you can climb out of the vivarium and create your own meaning in life, whilst watching those others still inside with curiosity as they scurry about with no self awareness of being watched