The meaning of the film Vivarium: a description of the plot & ending. It is worth starting with the fact that the film called Vivarium is the new work of a young Irish director and screenwriter Lorcan Finnegan. The main advantage of this film is that it has a very deep meaning and a good idea. The meaning of the film Vivarium, at first glance, is quite difficult to find and unearth. However, it lies in simple, but very valuable things: family, love, humanity.
Description of the story
The plot of the film Vivarium is as follows: young lovers Tom and Gem want to start a full life together. To do this, they must find a place to live.
The couple ends up in a perfectly furnished real estate agency. There, young people are met by a friendly, but alarmingly strange agent Martin. He suggests that Tom and Jema buy a house in a new cottage community. Martin himself escorts the couple to a place he defines as not very close, but not that far.
In the village of Yonder, everything looks unnaturally neat:
- patterned and deliberately correct green houses of standard development;
- manicured lawns on a perfectly flat road;
- clear sky with clouds of amazingly perfect shape.
Soon the strange agent leaves Jema and Tom at number 9, where everything is ready for their lives. Gradually, the couple realizes that they are trapped. In an endless labyrinth of streets with countless empty standard houses under an artificial sky. Communication in the village does not work. Attempts to escape end up driving in circles. Soon, a box with an anthropomorphic baby appears on the threshold of their house. On it is an inscription saying that if Tom and Gemma manage to raise him, they will be free.
Ending and hidden meaning
Next, let’s talk about the meanings embedded in the film by its creators. What is the meaning of the movie Vivarium? Before us is an experiment related to the abduction of people by some form of extraterrestrial intelligence. The settlement in which Tom and Jema are placed turns out to be a Vivarium, that is, a place intended for keeping experimental animals. The artificially created space of the Yonder village is multidimensional, its matter is different from what we are used to.
No exit
Other experimental couples are located in the neighboring standard houses vertically. However, this vertical is closed, so Gemma’s attempts to get out of the vivarium turn into a return to the starting point – to house number nine.
On a note! Apparently, the number 9 is endowed with symbolism. It can refer the viewer to 9 months of intrauterine life of a child, 9 circles of hell. It is in the house that the surrogate is trained, and the task of the humanoids who abduct people is to study human nature.
This happens through the creation of a cell of society. According to the calculations of humanoids, a man and a woman should raise a surrogate, as if they were their own child, in as close to natural conditions as possible, teach him knowledge about the world, social norms. However, the humanoids did not take into account that when raising offspring, people are guided not only and not so much by instincts as by feelings.
That the couple will have to raise a surrogate is predicted through a metaphorical scene that opens the film. In it, the cuckoo throws out the chicks of another species from the nest, taking their place. Apparently, the main goal of humanoids is not just a scientific experiment, but an imperceptible introduction into the life of the inhabitants of the Earth.
Tom and Gemma are at first reluctant and openly hate the human-humanoid hybrid that was thrown at them like a cuckoo. The surrogate is growing by leaps and bounds. In response to the hostility of his parents, he behaves aggressively. But, if over time the maternal instinct works in Jem, then Tom tries to get rid of the child and get out of the vivarium.
final chord
How did the movie Vivarium end? The inhumanity of the surrogate soon forces Jema back to reality.
On a note! The viewer logically raises the question: if the parents showed love and patience in relation to the surrogate, could he grow up humanely? Most likely not, because humanoids are devoid of feelings, the child only copies words, gestures, actions, but is not able to experience deep affection.
What is the meaning of the movie Vivarium? The tape poses moral questions to the viewer. Is it possible to arouse love in a person artificially? Is it possible to destroy the desire for freedom in people? Can something ideal and perfect evoke sincere feelings in us? The film certainly answers these questions in the negative.
The idea of how evil hides behind the facade of a peaceful life in a cozy quiet town has already become almost a classic for cinema. Now the surrogate can play the role of another recruiter of naive earthlings to continue the monstrous experiment. Thus, all stages of parent-child relationships simply could not be passed through in the conditions of the Vivarium.
Some foreign and Russian film critics rightly saw the meaning of the film Vivarium in the form of the collapse of the American dream of a peaceful family life in a quiet suburb. After all, an ideal building with symmetrical streets causes the characters first nausea, then disgust, and then animal fear.
