Existentialist Cinema

Exploring the engine of GTA IV and making artful use of the ‘rag doll mode’ immanent in the code to serve the dying (dis-)animation, amateur director “Don Jia” manages to overcome the limit of the software’s explicit, commercial-teleological ‘epoch of truth’ qua Zizek’s Heidegger, and delves into a whole new realm of humanity, moving his picture into a light that is as human as it is bleak and equally as noble as it is degenerate. Hence “existentialist”, and not “nihilist”. We’ve seen enough nihilism - now let us bring the real pain.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYZuNFHeZsg[/youtube]

[size=85]“[T]he harrowing story of Seymour Modickum, a former Lehman Bros. employee who, six months before the 2008 bank bust, was terminated from the firm owing to a severe case of marihuana induced schizophrenia, the ol’ chronic having triggered, among other negative side-effects to his already high-strung nervous system, a particularly caustic case of Tourettes syndrome, which had lain dormant since early childhood, when his parents, intent on making Seymour a strapping young entrepreneur, as well as possessing a lay interest in behavioral engineering not uncommon to the upwardly mobile middle class of the age, had enlisted the help of former CIA-psychologist turned motivational guru Dr. Theton, whom they contracted to full-on reprogram young Seymour’s subconscious belief system, erasing all morbidly self-reflective tendencies, supplanting these with more wholesome ‘winners’ messages.’ Seymour now roams the streets of Liberty City in a chemically induced frenzy. Will Seymour find salvation, rise and stand tall once more, or is it rather but a matter of time before the world finally catches up with him and stoops to his level?”[/size]