The Net is about a woman who unwittingly discovers the work of evildoers who are able to control and wreak havoc upon society. Very quickly, she finds herself desperately alone and facing a hostile adversary who is determined to eliminate her, and who happens to control all the critical information systems in the country. Fighting both for herself and the integrity of electronic information, she battles these forces to bring back security to a nation on the brink of corrupt domination. The plot of this film self-consciously contains many Hitchcockian elements, and strives to hold itself up to that standard of quality. It evidently failed in this goal, as it was generally panned by critics and was to be quickly forgotten like many mainstream Hollywood films. Although it is true that The Net does not live up to the high standards of the most successful suspense thrillers, it has been undeservingly regarded as another mindless movie trying to exploit the popularity of contemporary fads (in this case, the Internet) to draw viewers and dollars. Upon closer inspection, The Net proves to be more complex and multi-faceted. It grapples with many problems of modernity -- especially the relationship between the modern age and past culture, the creation and location of personal identity, and the nature of reality as a constructed entity. Finally, it is a self-reflexive film in that it acknowledges the problems that it is dealing with, and thus stands as a proposal to integrate, through dialectic, seemingly irreconcilable goals.

Reviews of The Net range from blatantly hostile to extremely favorable. The majority of critics agreed about the positive and negative elements of the film. They found Irwin Winkler's direction to be mediocre and unexceptional, some suggesting that he should have stayed a producer. Many commented on the logical or factual problems of the film, noting inaccuracies in the depiction of technology and computers. The story itself was criticized for being too predictable and unoriginal, utilizing all the standard cliched chase scenes and plot devices. One of the few things that they thought made the film worth watching was Sandra Bullock's performance as Angela Bennett, the woman around whom the plot centers: "The sheer likability of Bullock's onscreen presence overshadows almost all problems in any case" and "What the movie has going for it is Sandra Bullock, who is fashioning a career out of making mediocre movies better." They also expressed regard for Jeremy Northam for his role as Jack Devlin, the icy henchman who sets out to eliminate Angela. However, even the positive reviews mention plot problems and praise the movie mainly for Bullock's performance.

It is understandable that critics comment upon inaccurate depictions of technology. However, films about modern technology are rarely meant to be realistic, and must sacrifice some accuracy for the audience's sake (consider the scene in Jurassic Park where the girl gets control of the security system, or the 'descrambling' technique used in Sneakers). However, it would be a mistake to dismiss the movie simply because, e.g., it is premised upon the incorrect notion that such critical information is accessible through the Internet. This ignores a greater message in the film about society and its dependence on technology, something which should in itself be given more than passing notice.

The other major complaint about the film not being original or compelling is a valid reason for it to be perceived as a failure, but only if the goal of the film was merely to entertain people (and entertainment value, in fact, was a point on which critics often disagreed - some enjoyed watching it very much). However, there are many other ways in which this film can be viewed - although it is not outstanding by conventional entertainment standards, it is possible to view the film with an interpretation that brings out many of the unique and interesting elements which have been completely overlooked by nearly all film critics.

A major parallel that the film draws is between modern society and past Western culture, represented by Christianity and Classicism. These two together serve as interpretative structures for this film, projecting the past onto a vision of the modern age (giving allegorical meaning to modernity), and through such an identification, showing the contrasts between the past and the present.

The propagation of Christian themes is carried out primarily through naming. The protagonist's name is 'Angela,' or, as her computer icon shows, 'Angel' (the graphic is of a girl with a halo). She is also called 'Angel' by Ruth Marx, the woman who steals her name. Angela's last name is 'Bennett', which can simply be translated as 'ben' meaning "good" and 'nett' referring to the Internet. So she is an angel, the good part of the Internet world. Significantly, her Angel identity is associated with her identity in the Internet, and it is this world which is imbued with religious connotation. Angel's antagonist is named "Jack Devlin." The name 'Jack' is, evidently, a common name for the devil and is often associated with evil. The last name 'Devlin' is an obvious play on 'Devil'. Though the name is taken from Cary Grant's character T.R. Devlin in Hitchcock's Notorious, the role of Devlin differs in an interesting way. In Notorious, Grant's Devlin is presumably really in love with the female protagonist, Alicia Huberman, but refuses to say so, while Northam's Devlin is clearly not in love with Angela but says he is. The use of the spoken word here is interesting, as the role of language is important and will be discussed more below.

The company that Angel works for is called 'Cathedral.' There is a clear statement here about the role of high-tech computer companies that control information (our most valuable resource, especially in this film) and the religious institutions of the past (that essentially controlled "access" to God). This identification serves as a basis for the strongest statement in the film - that control of electronic information in modern times is akin to divine control. That is, that digital information now serves as society's deity. Having the power to control such information is the omnipotent power of God. Moreover, manipulation of this information is not simply a corruption of objective truth into falsehood, it seems to have more power than the manipulation of what is normally considered real, so that this manipulation creates reality itself. This Godlike power, unlike mortal power, is the ability to create reality through the Word, and in this way reality (and not, perhaps, only an image of it) is identified as consisting entirely in the digital bits and bytes of the electronic age. The reality of this digital world (and what such a reality means), however, is precisely the problem that this film addresses. In the plot, the evil group of 'Praetorians' (the general term for Roman guards, but specifically referring to those who put a scarlet robe and crown of thorns on Christ and mock him as he is about to be crucified) control a program called the 'Gatekeeper', which is supposed to be a security program, but really allows the group to infiltrate the system it is designed to protect. In this sense, it allows them access to a divine realm, and thus exploits and undermines the idea that electronic representation is a faithful reflection of Reality.

Significant events in the film have allegorical functions. At the end, when Angela wants to get Ruth Marx out of the Cathedral building, she uses the computers to pull a fire alarm. Here, she is able to exploit the Praetorian's own type of power, that of using technology to fashion a reality, in order to defeat them. The creation of a false Fire by the Angel in the (perhaps ironically named) Cathedral seems to be a statement about the extremely convoluted and complex relationship between reality, Truth, religion, and modernity. Further, Angela is able to escape from the building undetected by wearing the clothes of a firefighter. Here, she again exploits the confusion between reality and appearance against those agents who are most empowered by such deception - the Praetorians' software gives the appearance of ensuring security, when it is precisely because of that that it actually breaches security. Moreover, the idea of a firefighter itself is complex, for although it signifies one who works against fire, it is also one who works within fire. So although Angela works against the technological demons, she also works within (and her identity as an Angel is derived from) the sanctum of digital information.

There is a strong presence of Classical motifs in the film, which usually emphasize a tension between the past and the present. The computer program (or web site) of the Praetorians (a name which serves to link the Christian elements with Classicism by its reference to Romans) is called Mozart's Ghost. This features a graphic of an electric-guitar playing skeleton and loud background music. The combination of a clearly contemporary image with a name that signifies the death of an archetypal figure of classical music might indicate that the Praetorians understand the past as something to be refurbished and manipulated to suit the present (that is, the past is not just dead, but exists in a 'ghostly', altered form). Indeed, they use Classical elements such as the 'pi' symbol as the entrance to their secret world. Angela describes their Gatekeeper as a kind of "Trojan horse", which provides an appropriate metaphor for the Gatekeeper software when the phrase is interpreted in Classical terms (that is, the Greek invasion of Troy), but which in contemporary terms would represent another factual inaccuracy of the sort Hollywood movies often make.

Angela is herself a symbol of older times. She plays classical music (although Chopin is romantic by genre, it is classical when viewed in the larger historical framework), and wants a man who can play Bach cantatas. Her favorite drink is a gibson, which she realizes is a bit antediluvian; it is by knowing this that Devlin is first able to capture her attention (when he orders one). She even calls herself "behind the times," which may seem ironic for someone whose occupation involves 'beta'-testing software (a little Classical pun built into her job) and working with computers. Her favorite movie is Breakfast at Tiffany's, a film which also highlights the crisis of modern society. Devlin also uses this fact to seduce her. This time, he says that in his youth he used to think (or pretend) he was Holly Golightly's nameless cat. It is by utilizing the knowledge of Angela that he has learned, apparently from monitoring her life on the Internet, that Devlin is able to put on the appearance of also being old-fashioned in a world where such people are rare.

The most telling example of Classicism meeting modernity is presented in the opening scene of the film, which takes place in Washington D.C. This city serves as the perfect symbol of American society, the quintessential home of modernism and cultural agnosticism. At the same time, the architecture and design of the city is self-consciously Classical in the most obvious sense. The choice of D.C. as the setting for the opening scene paves the way for the rest of the film's treatment of this dialectic. The last shot of the opening scene involves a suicide, and as the gunshot echoes in the background, the camera pans to frame a very Classical-style statue. The way the statue is positioned, however, is such that it appears to be buried in the ground, with only its head and limbs sticking out. The contorted figure appears to be writhing in agony, and the tragedy of the statue being buried can be well-understood when we discover that the suicide was caused by the Praetorian manipulation of information, signaling the death of classical reality.

By thus contrasting the modern technological age of atheism or existentialism to one where God was God (and men were not God, and did not create reality), the framework of the film is able to work on multiple levels of representation. Thus, the allegorical meaning of symbols and names can be interpreted as showing structural similarities and serving as indicators of contrast, but ultimately tend to blur the distinction between our initial, naive conception of reality and the more holistic reality which the film expounds.

This notion of reality is very complex in the film. On the one hand, it wants to show that the electronic world is unreliable, that our belief in its veridical representation of reality is not well-founded. At the same time, it acknowledges the power of electronic information in contributing to a complete understanding of reality, and realizes that the uncertainty must be acknowledged and then dealt with. The tension between these two is manifested in a treatment about what it is to be real.

One of Angela's most psychologically tense moments is when she hesitates and then decides to write down her name as Ruth Marx in order to gain entrance back into the U.S. The act of writing is a way to locate oneself in the physical world - to create an existence for oneself that is external to one's body. Here, the physical act is incredibly important because it is a very real and almost

vulgar way to act upon the high-tech world. The society Angela is in is cursed because the traditional way of locating oneself consists in electronic memory. Since electronic memory is so volatile, intangible, and insubstantial, it is seen as a false and dangerous way of locating oneself in the external world. Writing, on the other hand, has a true existence that everyone can see directly without computers or electronic devices. It is very mundane, and it is precisely that that gives it its power. Angela hesitates so much in this scene because she realizes this power, and so her act is not just one of writing, but one of affirming (in her own system of reality, not the unreliable Praetorian one) her loss of identity. This is again demonstrated when Angela is caught by the police and is being interviewed. She says her name and commands "Write it down!", as if that act of writing can affirm her real existence as Angela Bennett by placing her name in the physical world.

Another way in which reality is understood here is in the cinematically self-reflexive notion of being watched. The awareness of the role of the camera is, not surprisingly, brought out by the cinematography. Angela is presented to us first through an overhead view as a moving camera looks into a skylight (as in Citizen Kane before each interview with Susan Alexander). At the airport scene, we are presented with point-of-view shots of someone watching Angela. At the Moscone center, there is also an unknown person watching everyone. In fact, there are several shots of video cameras in the hospital and jail scenes that unambiguously focus our attention upon the fact that the camera mediates our perception of reality. This brings the audience into the scene by making us aware of our position and our perspective through the use of unconventional angles and camera movement. As a result, we become aware of ourselves and of the fact that this perspective has been created and forced upon us. Hence, the scopophilic pleasure is turned uncomfortably upon itself, by forcing us to confront the camera's eye (and hence, our eye) as an added character to the creation (and not just depiction) of reality.

In these self-conscious scenes mentioned above, the impression we get is that the invisible camera eye is the eye of God. In this case, the ones who control information are the ones who know everything, and are constantly watching us. For this reason, Devlin knows everything about Angela, because he is able to 'watch' her on the Internet. In the carnival chase scene, Angela is able to escape from Devlin only by going into the middle of a carousel, which represents both a stationary point and a point away from view, since the outside is covered with mirrors. The logo of Cathedral as an eye, then, is appropriate in that the watchful eye of God is inseparable from the power of God (or the divine knower) to create reality. This watchfulness is not a negative statement about subjective reality per se, but makes a statement about the role of subjectivity in forming our views of reality, and hence is used to undermine any hopes of finding an Absolute Truth. Moreover, the eye of the Praetorians is a malicious one, and so should not be able to watch and control reality through its watching (and hence knowing). This gives rise to the paranoid feeling of living in an Orwellian future where Big Brother defines and watches over the world, and also serves to propel the film along by imbuing a constant feeling of agitation that comes from never being able to escape being seen.

This constant pressure of being seen is viewed as oppressive here only because it is malicious. Traditionally, being seen can be thought of as an affirmation of one's existence. Angela's mother, who has Alzheimer's, is unable to affirm Angela's existence because she does not have memory. Memory in this case, human or computer, is a requisite part of the knowing that comes along with seeing. This knowledge is what leads to a representation of reality, and is what is able to affirm identity and existence. Being remembered by other people thus serves as another way of externalizing one's existence in the world. Specifically, it serves as a way of maintaining identity that is less subject to manipulation than electronic memory. It is thus precisely because Angela is not seen by people in the physical world that her only existence is electronic, and thus vulnerable to manipulation.

Representations of reality in this film are important because they are presented in contrast to mere appearance. This theme of appearance and reality is crucial to the film's plot, and is self-reflexively important (as in many works of fiction that deal with this theme) for establishing the idea that non-reality (i.e., fiction) can be important to reality. The use of clothing in the film serves as a good example of Angela's views about appearance and her growing understanding of it. When she is on the boat, Devlin's suave appearance convinces Angela that he is really a wonderful man, and thus she makes herself vulnerable by shedding her clothes (revealing her true self). After being disabused of this idea, she has a fight with Devlin and falls out of the boat. She reawakens in the hospital and demands to have her clothing back. Her encounter with Devlin has awakened her to the divergence of appearance from reality, and so she wishes to protect herself by wearing her clothes again. Critical to this scene is that she demands her own clothes. The reason is because the appearance that clothing gives is still related to (and perhaps is often a reflection of) reality, and so it is in their concordance that identity is secured. Later on, her psychiatrist gives her his girlfriend's clothes to change into, and she has no problem doing this. This occurs after her name and home were taken away from her, and so her changing into someone else's clothes indicates her own abandonment of a strong commitment to her real self (or of needing the appearance to match). Later, when she puts on the firemen's clothes to escape the building, she is using an appearance to deceive others, but does not identify herself with that appearance. That is, she uses the fact that others take appearances to be real to deceive the Praetorians, a tactic that she learned from the Praetorians themselves. At the end of the film, her jacket is caught as she is running away, and so her clothing starts to shed, revealing a real Angela again. Dealing with the problems of appearance and reality has led Angela to become adept at learning to use appearances and understand them, and so allows her to finally defeat Devlin (who at this point confuses appearances and shoots his ally Ruth Marx).

This duality and deception pervades the entire world of The Net. Jack is the prototypical prince-of-darkness as gentleman, presenting a completely false appearance to Angela. The Praetorians try to trick her by having a false FBI agent bail her out of jail. Ruth Marx switches names with Angela; it is not merely that Angela is given some invented name, but that the name she is given actually corresponds to something in reality, and hence has a relationship to it. Gatekeeper is supposed to provide security but in fact compromises it; the complexity here is that the Praetorian's Gatekeeper is only implemented because the Praetorians themselves go around breaching systems that are not 'protected' by it. In these cases, it can be seen that the use of appearance is tied to a function in reality, and this leads to a relationship where reality and appearance are intricately linked. The multiple layers of what can be seen gives rise to the idea that reality is composed of these threads of appearance that must be woven together.

This tapestry of reality can be seen by examining Angela's favorite film, Breakfast at Tiffany's. That film also addresses the problem of finding identity in the modern world. The life of Lula-mae Barnes (Holly Golightly) starts in rural Texas, getting married at 14 to a much older man. She escapes that life and eventually ends up in New York, after being 'fashioned' (in a briefly-mentioned Pygmalion-esque episode) by O.J. Berman. At the party scene, we see that he asks Paul his opinion, "Is she a phony?" Paul replies that she is not, but Berman says, "She is a phony, but a real phony. She believes everything." Here, Holly seems to be mere appearance, but that appearance is given the weight of reality because it is believed in. The problem of Holly's identity seems to be that, in the modern (urban, hence New York) world, all such reality is created in that way. For example, the major way that the characters here try to find meaning is in acquiring money. Money is viewed as a way of providing meaning, of creating identity, but ultimately proves futile for the couple. The reason is because money is also another form of conventional value, one that is real only in virtue of people's belief that it is. However, this convention is an integral part of how we create reality in a community, and again involves the mental states of other minds. Though this film ultimately rejects conventional reality, it also does not escape from itself and attempt to leave the modern world. It realizes that identity is possible in a world of convention, and this positive message is also adopted by The Net.

Angela's change by the end of the film indicates her acceptance of an otherwise intolerable reality. The final scene shows Angela with her mother. Angela no longer insists that her mother recognize her, nor is she frustrated by the loss of memory associated with Alzheimer's. Instead, she is able to function in a way that does not demand that a particular reality be acknowledged (that the woman is her mother). Similarly, her mastery of the Praetorian way of manipulating reality is a reflection of her understanding of the way the world actually is. By the end of the film, she has finally realized the duplicity of the Praetorians, and it is this knowledge that allows her to act effectively in response. This insight suggests that an awareness that the appearance of reality can be corrupted should not lead to wild hysteria, but should instead prepare us to think and act in the appropriate way.

Her ultimate defeat of the Praetorians is not simply a victory for a society on the brink of insecure paranoia, but provides a way of coming to terms with a world that does and must deal with reality in terms of appearances (such as electronic information). This additional thread can be joined to the larger fabric of reality to form a net - not one which captures and entangles us, but one which safely keeps us from falling.

Given this interpretation, it can be seen that The Net is full of rich subtleties. It is not merely the newest mediocre suspense thriller, it also addresses central philosophical issues that may lie behind the mindset of disillusionment in the modern world (as exemplified by urban America). As such, the film itself echoes the duality of appearance and reality that permeate its content. It clearly targets the mainstream market, and because of this assumes the appearance of mainstream cinema. But for precisely the same reason, it failed to be taken seriously by critics or film theorists. They themselves took the appearance of the film to be the whole reality behind it. Their faulting the film's cliched chase scenes and stolen Hitchcockian elements shows that they do not understand the film's dual role not as just another Hollywood picture, but as an attempt to problematize its own treatment of appearance and reality. Seen in this light, the lack of originality is a necessary part of the film, just as it necessarily must put on the appearance of being mainstream. Because of this, the film's statement would not be improved by making it more blatantly intellectual or sophisticated. And unlike well-crafted films that are also widely appealing, this film must set up a true opposition between appearance and reality that understands itself in order to deal with the issue in a consistent manner. For these reasons, an appreciation of this film as a whole must be accomplished by understanding it in both its superficial and its underlying purposes, for it is the underlying purpose that necessitates the convincing reality of its appearance.