Nothing matters. The concept of emptiness and nothingness is one of the most essential to human development and the fabric of the universe itself, in so many ways — mathematically, spiritually, economically, technologically, philosophically, and physically. From accounting and astrophysics to binary code and electricity, developing and disseminating that magical number zero (a circle around nothing) had some of the most important consequences for the future of humanity and the world, and still, even after roughly 1700 years, it’s difficult to wrap one’s head around zero.
Is nothing something? It seems to exist, since we can not just conceive of it but also point to it (a hole in a donut, the emptiness in a barren bottle) and quantify it mathematically with zero. If nothing is material, rather than immaterial, then that would mean nothing is something — which would mean that there’s no such thing as nothing. Yet, as soon as you say that, the argument collapses, because nothing must be something in order for there to be no such thing as nothing.
These are the kind of oddball metaphysical stoner musings that the 2003Vincenzo NatalifilmNothinginspires. Following the acclaim of hishorrifying philosophical masterpieceCubeand the vastly underrated sci-fi filmCypher(a word which derives from the Arabic termsifr, which means ‘nothing’ or ‘zero’), Natali and his high school friends andCubeactors made this low-budget, experimental comedy that serves as a (vastly different) spiritual sequel to the existential terror ofCube. Let’s take a closer look atNothing, because, like Oscar Wilde’s character Lord Goring inAn Ideal Husband, “I love talking about nothing. It’s the only thing I know anything about.”
Vincenzo Natali Creates Something Out of Nothing, or Vice Versa
IfCubeconcerned itself withthe existential crisisof discovering that nothing matters, everything is beyond our control, and meaning is a fiction we make to comfort ourselves (and that’s a strong “if”), thenNothingexplores the flip side to that crisis.Nothingembraces the idea that nothing matters, and while the concept of the film is itself kind of terrifying, it’s filmed through this philosophical perspective (optimistic nihilism, as opposed tothe pessimistic nihilismCube).
As a result,Nothingis liberating, light, silly, and very fun, because the only way that emptiness and nothingness can be sad, scary, or serious is if contentment or happiness are predicated upon a meaningful existence. As Thomas Ligotti wrote inThe Conspiracy Against the Human Race, “In perfect knowledge there is only perfect nothingness, which is perfectly painful if what you want is meaning in your life.”
Nothingbegins with multiple title cards assuring viewers that everything in the film is absolutely true, and that it’s important to realize this. It then follows two lifelong friends and housemates, Dave (David Hewlett) and Andrew (Andrew Miller), who are more or less ‘the wretched of the earth’ (or at least Toronto). They live in a world exaggerated enough to be engaging but not enough to be completely unbelievable, and Natali knows that the truth lies in between.
Their crowded house would make a hoarder claustrophobic and looks ready to collapse at any moment; also, it’s literally built between two major interstates. Dave’s co-workers are a bunch of Jims, and he enters the grossly fluorescent, cramped office to see his chair tied to the ceiling. His boss is a smiling scumbag who fires him for embezzling $27,000. His girlfriend of two weeks nonchalantly tells him that she embezzled the money and is leaving, and obviously never cared for him at all.
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Meanwhile, Andrew is deeply paranoid, depressed, and agoraphobic. He accidentally locks himself out of the house and has an intense panic attack, until a girl scout helps him back in. When he’s mildly rude to her, she cusses him out and then tells her mother that he’s a child predator who tried to kiss her. He tries to hang himself, but the ceiling collapses. As some police arrive for Dave about the fake embezzlement, and more police arrive for Andrew about the fake pedophilia, local governments and construction workers arrive and want to tear down their house for a third highway. Everything is too much, every single thing.
And then there’s nothing. No things at all.
The Science of Nothing
Andrew, Dave, their turtle Stan, and their weird Seussian house are alone in a seemingly infinite void of quiet nothingness. Their house is the same, but everywhere around them is a blank white space. There’s nothing on the horizon; there isn’t even a horizon for there to be nothing on, just blankness with a complete absence of perspective.
Scientifically speaking, there is no such thing as nothing. There is always a something in an empty space, from elements like oxygen to leptons like tau neutrinos, waves and particles (and both at the same damn time) are everywhere, mist-like over everything. This is nothing new; the idea goes back 2300 years to Aristotle’s idea ofhorror vacui, “nature abhors a vacuum.” This plenist idea has been debated, but it’s essentially provable in these quantum days of ours.
Nothing and the Theatre of the Absurd
Absurdity and comedy often skip together hand-in-hand through the void. Philosophers who believe existence to be absurd, like Albert Camus, rarely wallowed in self-serious misery. Philosopher Robert C. Solomon summed this (andNothing) up well inthe dreamlike filmWaking Lifewhen he said, “Sartre, once interviewed, said he never really felt a day of despair in his life. One thing that comes out from reading these guys is not a sense of anguish about life so much as, a real kind of exuberance, of feeling on top of it, it’s like your life is yours to create.” Once you accept nothingness, you’re able to make it your own.
Samuel Beckett, though he seemed a dour man, injected a great deal of humor into his famously absurd plays and novels; hell, Buster Keaton was one of his favorite actors (and actually performed in a short Beckett film). “Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness,” Beckett once said (to which Art Spiegelman replied, “On the other hand, he SAID it”), but his stance toward nothingness was an embrace more than anything. “Nothing is more real than nothing,” he wrote inMallone Dies, something Natali may have read. The filmmaker said in an interview withThe Trades, “There really weren’t too many touchstones, literary or otherwise. Except Beckett. We do owe a small debt to the Theatre of the Absurd.”
Natali’sNothingis an absurd(ist) film — not just because it disregards logic and science, not because it never truly explains why everything disappears, and not merely because it has gravity-defying slapstick comedy. No, it’s an absurd(ist) film because it embraces meaninglessness, interrogates nothingness, and explores what it means to be human within those philosophical confines, the good and the bad. Theslapstick screwball comedyhelps, though.
Finding Meaning in Nothing
Nothingisfunny in an offbeat way, silly and bizarre but exuding the vibes of three great friends having fun together (which basically describes the production of the film). Hewlett and Miller are delightful in an over-the-top way, exploring the nothingness with initial trepidation, followed by paranoia, and then ultimate acceptance, enjoyment, and fun (at least for a while). All the threats, overlords, and white noise of reality never really meant anything anyway, and now they’re literally nothing — Dave and Andrew see that now, and proceed to find something in themselves and ineach other’s platonic love.
Natali continued to tell The Trades, “In the end, David and Andrew find happiness in spite of the world and in spite of the nothingness. They find it in each other. And to me, that’s the core of the movie — a story about friendship.” At the same time, however, Natali is likely familiar with Sartre’s phrase fromNo Exit, that “hell is other people.”
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When Dave and Andrew theorize that the surrounding nothingness is a result of impassioned wishful thinking, that they hated the world so much that they removed it from their existence, the two begin to ‘hate away’ other things, including thoughts and memories. If nothing matters (and if the world is so contemptible), then the power of the mind can be used to change one’s perspective on things. This is the function of therapy, and also meaning-making. Then again, the power of the mind also means that neuroses and anxieties can also warp perception.
Replacing something with nothing in their own neurons results in some personality changes, disputes, and poor decisions between Dave and Andrew, because remember, there is no such thing as nothing. Even inaction is an action. Andrew willfully decides not to turn a certain bad memory into nothing, and there’s trouble in paradise as a result. Natali elaborated:
It’s interesting to see not only what Andrew chooses to eliminate, but also what he chooses to remember — he doesn’t want to forget how David hurt him. He doesn’t want to let it go, even though he has the power to erase it. He would rather they live in misery. I think that very particularly human action is the basis for a lot of global conflicts.
God is Perfect Nothing and Nothing Matters Perfectly
“The power to erase it” and “let it go,” as Natali said, is a revered consequence of embracing nothingness, from modern mindfulness to ancient spirituality. Almost every form of faith has elements which revere and celebrate nothingness asa religious theme, such as Kabbalah in Judaism; the 14th century kabbalist David ben Abraham ha-Laban wrote, “Nothingness (ayin) is more existent than all the being of the world,” and the faith considers nothingness (ayin) to be a part of God.
With Sufism in Islam,fanais the important process of self-annihilation and emptying into nothing. In more mystical Christianity, especially the apophatic traditions, nothingness becomes the very point of unity for humanity and the divine; “At the center of our being is a point of nothingness,” wrote Thomas Merton, with theologian Meister Eckhart going much further in the 14th century, saying God “is a nothingness, pure and simple.” Shizuteru Ueda, D.T. Suzuki, and even Arthur Schopenhauer would then tie Eckhart intothe Buddhist and Zen traditions, in which nothingness itself (sunyata) is so important.
So — why is nothing important, and why doesNothingmatter? First, there is the aforementioned liberation of nothingness, the realization that everyone is bound together in the prison of infinity and eternity, and that this nothingness can unite us in solidarity and friendship (or even with God or Nirvana). This is, of course, terrifying to many people, like the characters of Natali’sCube; as Sartre writes inExistentialism is a Humanism, “Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. It is up to you to give [life] a meaning.”
Nothing is Important For Something Worthwhile
Instead of a condemnation, though, Natali seems to know (like the mystics and philosophers before him) that the embrace of nothingness and non-being is not necessarily an end unto itself, which is the other importance of nothingness. Instead, creating emptiness can open up space for something new in the context of meaningless nothingness. The opposite side of the Sufifanaisbaqaa, meaning ‘permanence’ or ‘subsistence.’ Here, once the ego and the illusion of self and meaning are annihilated, the nothingness can become a place for God’s purpose and divine union, or in atheistic, existentialist terms, self-fabricated meaning. The seed destroys itself to become a plant; nothingness is embraced to organize a new way to say something.
Nothingstrips everything away to create a new minimalist framework in which to experiment and have some philosophical fun. “What a relief to have nothing to say, the right to say nothing, because only then is there a chance of framing the rare, or ever rarer, the thing that might be worth saying,” wrote Gilles Deleuze inMediators, something which beautifully applies toNothing.
Better yet, John Cage, who created the famous musical piece4'33in which no note is played, wrote inLecture on Nothing,“I have nothing to say and I am saying it and that is poetry as I need it. This space of time is organized. We need not fear these silences — we may love them.” Natali, with his weird and wonderful film, embraced nothing in order to say something worth hearing.
Vincenzo Natali and Resources About Nothing
Natali’s 2003 filmNothingcan be purchased on DVD or found in poor quality online, though hopefully someone will be brave to enough to fund the Blu-Ray release of this bold, obscure film (or even finance the third minimalist Natali film,Echo Beach, which would complete his trilogy afterCubeandNothingbut has never been made). Natali’s segment of the new Guillermo Del ToroNetflix seriesCabinet of Curiosities, entitledGraveyard Rats, reunites him with David Hewlett and is phenomenal. He has also recently directed half of the new Prime Video seriesThe Peripheral.
If you’d like to read more about the concept of nothingness and the importance of zero, invaluable information can be found inNothing: A Philosophical Historyby Roy Sorensen,Absence and Nothing: The Philosophy of What There Is Notby Stephen Mumford,Holes and Superficialitiesby Achille Varzi,Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Ideaby Charles Seife, andThe Nothing That Is: A Natural History of Zeroby Robert Kaplan. You could also watchSeinfeld.
