The Thirteenth Floor (1999)

Director: Josef Rusnak

Producer: Roland Emmerich, Ute Emmerich, Marco Weber

Writers: Josef Rusnak; Ravel Centeno-Rodriguez

Actors: Craig Bierko; Gretchen Mol; Vincent D’Onofrio; Dennis Haysbert; Armin Mueller-   Stahl

Cinematography: Wendigo von Schultzendorff

Music: Harald Kloser

Rated: R (violence and language)

Running time: 100 mins.

L.A. on a wire

     Los Angeles: yesterday, today, and tomorrow. This tech-noir movie opens in the past (1937), jumps quickly to the present (1999), and ends in the future (2024). But how much of it is reality? 

     We learn early on that the 1937 L.A. is actually a virtual simulation created by Hannon Fuller (Armin Mueller-Stahl), head of a multi-billion dollar computer enterprise in present-day Los Angeles. The simulation is a first step attempt to create a virtual world---- a sophisticated video game using computer generated people possessing self-awareness. Fuller chose 1937 because it was the era of his childhood. 

       We also learn that Fuller has been using the system to “jack in”, or transfer consciousness with one of the 1937 characters (called units in the movie) in order to have sex with several young women working at a high-end hotel on Wilshire Boulevard (the Ambassador). During one of his virtual visits he leaves a letter with Ashton (Vincent D’Onofrio), the hotel bartender, and asks him to give it to a certain Douglas Hall, who Fuller expected would be asking for it. In the letter was shocking information Fuller had recently discovered.

        Upon his return to the present, Fuller is brutally murdered in an alley downtown; and Douglas Hall (Craig Bierko), who it turns out is Fuller’s associate and second-in-command, is suspected of the killing. Soon a woman claiming to be Fuller’s daughter Jane (Gretchen Moll) shows up intending to close down the company. She and Hall feel an affinity for each other and soon become romantically involved. But everything points to Hall as the murderer, and the detective on the case, McBain (Dennis Haysbert), persists in pursuing him.

         Soon Hall begins to suspect himself; and after finding out about Fuller’s trips into virtuality, he decides to do the same in order to find out if Fuller left any clues that might clear him of murder. What he does find “shakes the very foundation of his being”.

          The Thirteenth Floor is a German production loosely based on the novel Simulacron-3 by Daniel F. Galouye, and the movie Welt im Draht (World on a Wire)(1973) by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. In 2000 it was nominated for the Saturn Award for best science fiction film, but lost out to The Matrix. It opens with Descartes famous quote, “I think, therefore I am”, and asks the questions: what is reality, and what makes us human? Why Roland Emmerich, the producer, chose Los Angeles as the setting for this sci-fi noir is speculative, but for a century L.A. has been famed for being the center of unreality and fantasy. The movies made here are renowned for creating virtual worlds and times and for making fantasy appear as reality. What better place to explore the whole concept of reality. 

         The CGI in this late 90s movie is very artistic. For the 1937 simulation the technicians took photos of present-day Broadway and Wilshire Boulevard and cancelled out the modern buildings, leaving in those from pre-World War II. They then filled in the blank spaces using actual photos from the the 30s. The Red Cars on Wilshire have a genuine look to them as do the autos and extras depicted in the streets. Both the Ambassador and Biltmore Hotels, called the Wilshire Grand Hotel in the film, were used for the important nightclub scenes as was the Queen Mary. It’s a last look at the old Ambassador still in its original art deco glory just before it was renovated and defaced to make way for a school. These club scenes are so well done you expect to see Cary Grant and Jean Harlow walk in at any minute, and Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers appear in a dance number. The brief future scenes, set in 2024, are effective, but not as noteworthy.

            In typical noir style, most of the scenes, particularly the present-day ones, take place at night and are centered downtown and in the San Pedro-Wilmington harbor area. The Ennis-Brown House in Los Feliz was used for Doug Hall’s apartment, as it was for Rick Deckard’s in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner seventeen years before. Hall like Deckard is another Angeleno who winds up doubting his reality.

            This Emmerich/Rusnak look at Los Angeles is another one coming from a non-American perspective. Unlike others that deal solely with the contemporary city at a particular time--- Model Shop and Zabriskie Point--- this one is more well-rounded; it shows a city with a past, a present, and a future: a glamorous past, an inventive pioneering present, and a technologically advanced future. The questions it poses regarding the nature of reality and the essence of humanity are not answered, but are left for the viewer to figure out.  Even the reality of the future L.A. depicted at the end of the film is put in doubt, for the movie does not end--- it shuts off.