The Thirteenth Floor (1999)

The year is 1999, and a science fiction thriller arrives about nested simulations: a 1937 Los Angeles built inside a 1999 Los Angeles, which is itself built inside something else. The Thirteenth Floor stars Craig Bierko as Douglas Hall, a man who learns he is software, and Gretchen Mol as the woman who may or may not exist. It was nominated for a Saturn Award and lost to The Matrix, a defeat that has defined it ever since. Slavoj Zizek liked it more than The Matrix. That is the entire cultural footprint.

On the ledger of social concern, the film is nearly barren, and it seems content to be. Dennis Haysbert plays a detective, and Janet MacLachlan appears in support, both without a word of commentary; the casting shows a mild openness and nothing resembling an agenda. Race is never a subject. Neither is queerness, the climate, the body, or the mind. The villainy of a multibillion-dollar software empire registers as a plot mechanic, not an indictment of capital. The 1937 setting is period dressing. Mol's Jane Fuller schemes, lies, and steers the narrative, which gives the picture a faint pull toward feminist agency, though she is ultimately a romantic obstacle and a conspiracy with legs.

The film does raise the big questions about reality. It raises them through suspense and men arguing in parking structures, trusting the audience to keep up instead of stopping to instruct. That is a form of respect, and it dates the film to a gentler era. The result is a thriller with almost no social program, a rarity in any decade and something close to a museum piece now. It ends with the image collapsing to a thin line of light, as if a monitor were switching off. A fitting close for a movie that never quite worked up the nerve to lecture anyone.