Stepping barefoot into the virtual future
CANNES, FRANCE— It’s pre-dawn in the Sonoran Desert near the Western U.S.-Mexico boundary, where I have been magically whisked barefoot and bewildered by advanced cinema technology, and a ragged group of migrants is heading toward me.
“I can’t walk!” a voice cries in Spanish, as an exhausted middle-aged woman falls to the sandy ground, which is dotted with scrub bush and stunted cacti. A younger woman goes to her aid, and I rush over to try to assist, but I go unnoticed.
As I try to make sense of the halfdark horizon — is that red light in the sky the planet Mars? — the migrants, about a dozen in all, start yelling and running for cover behind the rough vegetation. I join them, my heart racing, as I realize the red light is an approaching helicopter, with a powerful searchlight that strafes the desert floor. The sand is cool on my feet and I can feel the wind of the chopper blades as I think of a scene from Apocalypse Now.
The helicopter is joined by Humvees containing U.S. Border Control cops from nearby Arizona, who are on the prowl for illegal immigrants from Mexico and Central America.
“Put your hands on your head where we can see them!” the cops shout. “Get on your hands and knees!”
I obey the instructions, as do the migrants, as I begin to understand what it must feel like to be one of the thousands of desperate people who each year attempt to enter the U.S. illegally, through a desert route so hot and desolate, parts of it are referred as “The Devil’s Highway” or “Road of the Dead.”
The incredible scene I’m describing is from Carne y Arena (Flesh and Sand), a next-level virtual reality installation at the Cannes Film Festival by Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu ( The Revenant, Birdman) and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, Oscar winners both, who want to give people an idea of what it really feels like to be a person so desperate to start a new life in America, they’re willing to risk their lives to get in.
This is unlike any VR experience I’ve ever had, and the most immersive movie experience I’ve ever engaged with.
Suddenly, the future world of science fiction seems very here and now. The installation is in a hangar in a small airport, about a 20minute drive along the Riviera waterfront from the centre of Cannes. Little explanation is given as I am escorted by a guide to a room roughly 50 square feet, located behind a billboard-sized piece of corrugated steel that used to be part of the actual boundary wall between Mexico and Arizona. It was previously used as makeshift helicopter pad for U.S. troops fighting the Vietnam War.
“Don’t be afraid to interact with the installation,” the guide says, as she points me to a door where I am to enter alone. “Experience it less as a journalist and more as a human being.”
Through the door is a small antechamber where a sign instructs me to remove my shoes and socks and place them in a locker in the wall. On another wall are shoes, bags and other possessions left by migrants who have attempted the desert border crossing, many succeeding but a significant number failing — 6,000 of them dying in the sand over one seven-year stretch.
A buzzer sounds and a light flashes, instructing me to pass through another door. Inside the dimly lit room, with sand on the floor, three men greet me and help me to put on an Oculus Rift VR headset that fits like a snug helmet, but also covers my eyes and ears. I’m also fitted with a small backpack attached to a large suspended cable that looks like a robotic umbilical cord. The men tell me to freely walk around, but warn that if I feel a buzzing in my back — like a cellphone vibrating in your pocket — I am about to hit a real wall. All I have to do is step back and head in another direction.
And then I am in the desert scene described above, for an experience that lasts just six-and-a-half minutes but creates a memory that will last a lifetime — especially the moment where one of the border cops notices me, shines his flashlight in my eyes and orders me to get on my hands and knees, with hands on my head.
I comply, but lose my balance and fall onto one of the migrants, or rather into him. I briefly see his beating heart as I right myself and get back onto my knees. He hasn’t noticed me because I am “virtually present, physically invisible,” to quote the installation’s slogan.
“No experience in Carne y Arena will ever be the same for any visitor,” Inarritu says in notes for the installation. “We created a truthful alternate space where you as a visitor will walk alongside the immi- grants (and into their minds) with infinite possibilities and perspectives within a vast landscape, but you will go on your own terms.”
When the experience ends and I am led through yet another door to a small room to retrieve my socks and shoes, I linger at a photo display on the wall. It shows the faces and tells the personal stories of the real people of all ages I saw in the VR desert, who told their stories to Inarritu. Some even contributed the clothing they wore while making their dangerous cross-border treks.
“I do not wish this journey on my worst enemy,” says Jessica, 17, from the Honduras, who travelled to Mexico and then across the desert to Arizona because friends told her the U.S. is “a paradise of work.”
“I know that most of us are good people,” says another migrant, a 22-year-old from El Salvador named Francisco.
Tell that to U.S. President Donald Trump, who has pledged to build “a great wall” between Mexico and the United States, to keep out the “rapists” and “criminals” he claims are among the Mexican immigrants seeking new homes in America.
Carne y Arena is premiering at Cannes as the first-ever VR pick for the festival’s Official Selection. After Cannes, it will have its begin a tour that includes Milan, Los Angeles and Mexico City, with more places likely to come.
It’s not yet ready for mass consumption — just 100 people per day can view Carne y Arena — but it points to a fast-approaching future when we won’t just be watching movies, we’ll be inside them, experiencing stories in ways that we have previously only dreamed of.