Why The Game remains David Fincher’s trick­i­est thriller

Com­ing hard upon the huge suc­cess of Se7en, although in fact con­ceived before it, David Fincher’s The Game presents itself as a mys­tery to be solved. We know this because the open­ing cred­its sequence shows a grid of ani­mat­ed jig­saw puz­zle pieces scat­ter­ing apart, sig­ni­fiers of a frag­ment­ing big­ger pic­ture and mean­ing in need of recon­struc­tion. We then cut to an old 16mm home movie of a par­ty in the mas­sive Van Orton estate, where young birth­day boy Nicholas (Scott Hunter McGuire) clowns around while his vast­ly wealthy father (Charles Mar­tinet) appears before reced­ing into the shadows.

Cut to the present day, and Nicholas (Michael Dou­glas) is all grown up, still liv­ing in that same lux­u­ri­ous estate (with the same maid) and run­ning a high-end invest­ment bank in a build­ing that bears the fam­i­ly name and that, along with the expen­sive inscribed watch on his wrist he has inher­it­ed from his father. It’s Nicholas’ birth­day once more, although also a rather dif­fer­ent mile­stone: he has now reached the same age at which his father took a sui­ci­dal leap to his death many decades ear­li­er before his young son’s eyes.

So this is a time of mixed feel­ings, of cel­e­bra­tion and sad­ness – not that Nicholas does much cel­e­brat­ing. Fas­tid­i­ous­ly neat, divorced, mis­an­throp­ic, worka­holic, unchar­i­ta­ble and aggres­sive­ly curt, this high­ly priv­i­leged con­trol freak cuts a Scrooge-like fig­ure in his self-imposed iso­la­tion from the soci­ety around him, and is vis­i­bly annoyed when a sec­re­tary has the audac­i­ty to wish him a hap­py birthday.

The only per­son for whom Nicholas does have – and make – time is his younger broth­er Con­rad (Sean Penn), the black sheep of the fam­i­ly who has had a string of prob­lems with addic­tion and self-dis­ci­pline, and is in every way Nicholas’ oppo­site. Mak­ing a sur­prise vis­it from out of town for the first time in some years, Con­rad has come bear­ing a spe­cial gift for the man who has every­thing: an invi­ta­tion to par­tic­i­pate in a bespoke Game run by a com­pa­ny called Con­sumer Recre­ation Ser­vices (CRS).

Details about both CRS and the nature of the Game are sketchy, but both Con­rad and some fel­low exec­u­tives Nicholas meets in his club sug­gest it will make his life fun and open his eyes. Curi­ous, Nicholas signs up and sub­mits to a long series of psy­cho­log­i­cal and phys­i­cal tests. And then, the Game is on, and a man who has it all finds him­self increas­ing­ly at risk of hav­ing it all tak­en away.

The mys­tery promised from the out­set is not so much Nicholas’ iden­ti­ty. We can see from very ear­ly on that he is an enti­tled, pam­pered prick with dad­dy issues, and that there is lit­tle else to him. The real mys­tery here is the Game itself, whose rules are nev­er stat­ed, and whose bound­aries are ill-defined. Once the Game is in play, Nicholas is nev­er quite sure where it ends and real­i­ty begins – but the Game cer­tain­ly does turn his life upside down. Jim Fein­gold (James Reb­horn), the data ana­lyst who takes Nicholas through the ini­tial sign-up process at CRS, tells him that the Game is designed to ​“pro­vide whatever’s lacking”.

In super­rich Nicholas’ case, that would seem to involve mak­ing a mess of his immac­u­late clothes and his per­fect home, send­ing him into an odd-cou­ple part­ner­ship with a work­ing-class wait­ress (Deb­o­rah Kara Unger) whom he would usu­al­ly entire­ly over­look, dri­ving a wedge between him and his broth­er, and grad­u­al­ly depriv­ing him of his wealth, his sense of cen­tred con­trol and even his will to live.

As the sheer scale of what is hap­pen­ing to him sinks in, and Nicholas starts to won­der if what he is expe­ri­enc­ing is a mon­u­men­tal prac­ti­cal joke, a ther­a­peu­tic inter­ven­tion, or a con­spir­a­to­r­i­al scam to fleece him of his fam­i­ly for­tune, he will, like his father before him, take mul­ti­ple falls. These lit­er­al, phys­i­cal tum­bles instan­ti­ate both his own head­long descent from the lofty heights of the one per cent, and the death wish which just might be anoth­er of his legacies.

They also recall Joel Schumacher’s Falling Down, which starred Dou­glas once again as a man in free fall. Mean­while the film’s set­ting in San Fran­cis­co simul­ta­ne­ous­ly evokes Dou­glas’ break­out role in ​’70s TV cop series The Streets of San Fran­cis­co, as well as the dis­ori­ent­ing alter­na­tive real­i­ties of Alfred Hitchcock’s Ver­ti­go. The song ​‘White Rab­bit’, which fea­tures promi­nent­ly in The Game, is apt not just for its mind-alter­ing lyrics, but because Jef­fer­son Air­plane were part of the San Fran­cis­co alt-rock scene.

What ensues falls some­where between para­noid thriller and social satire, as Dou­glas plays a char­ac­ter not so very far (except in the geo­graph­i­cal sense) from his Gor­don Gekko in Oliv­er Stone’s Wall Street, and as we are both bewil­dered and enter­tained by see­ing this hubris­tic yet dam­aged man brought so very low, both finan­cial­ly and emotionally.

Yet it turns out that the Game is an invert­ed par­o­dy of cap­i­tal­ism itself, whose struc­tures can be manip­u­lat­ed and whose per­son­nel can be top­pled, but which ulti­mate­ly emerges essen­tial­ly intact and unscathed by all the dra­mas and intrigues that form its role-play­ing sce­nar­ios. Nicholas is repeat­ed­ly tak­en out of his com­fort zone, but what makes Fincher’s film so much more uncom­fort­able for view­ers is the ease with which we become will­ing to iden­ti­fy with, even root for, a char­ac­ter who would be very unlike­ly to rec­i­p­ro­cate such empa­thy if we stum­bled even a little.

The more we invest in Nicholas’ bank of expe­ri­ences, the more we dis­play our will­ing com­plic­i­ty with, even sub­servience to, a sys­tem that lets cocooned elites mere­ly play games (on an urban, even inter­na­tion­al scale) while the rest of us must live our grub­by, messy lives in a real world of real con­se­quences. The only les­son that there is to learn about Nicholas, the film’s arch cap­i­tal­ist, is just how pre­dictable his con­duct is, and how untouch­able his type ulti­mate­ly proves to be.

As well as being about class struc­tures, The Game is also con­cerned with the arti­fi­cial work­ings of cin­e­ma itself. For the peo­ple at CRS oper­ate like a film crew, wran­gling a large ensem­ble of actors and extras, co-ordi­nat­ing set-pieces, engag­ing in elab­o­rate stunt work and spe­cial effects, and han­dling one nar­ra­tive twist after anoth­er to lead their very pri­vate audi­ence right where they want him. This is a film which not only con­stant­ly manip­u­lates the view­er (Nicholas and us), but also reveals the very mechan­ics of those manip­u­la­tions. And while this crew may be mak­ing fun of their mark and using his mon­ey and suc­cess against him, in the end they remain play­things very much in his pocket.

Any­one who has pur­chased a tick­et to Fincher’s film is already part of this game, if mere­ly a side play­er. For Con­sumer Recre­ation Ser­vices indeed serves to recre­ate the con­sumer, mod­el­ling America’s trick­le-down mar­ket econ­o­my where there may be dips, blips and falls, but dra­mat­ic change only ever real­ly affects the 99 per cent, while those at the top can brush them­selves off, feel great about them­selves, maybe even get the girl, have the Hol­ly­wood end­ing, and reassert pro­pri­etary con­trol of the Amer­i­can Dream.

The Game is avail­able on a two-disc Lim­it­ed Edi­tion Blu-ray/D­VD set pre­sent­ed in a direc­tor-approved remas­ter from Arrow Acad­e­my on 27 July.