Gabriele Salvatores, director of Academy Award-winning Mediterraneo, found the inspiration for Nirvana on the banks of the Ganges. "I was watching some children play with a computer near an icon of Shiva dancing inside the circle of reincarnation," recalls Salvatores. "In Hinduism and Buddhism, the perpetual cycle of death and reincarnation is broken only when one reaches nirvana, a state of peace, detachment and the annihilation of pain. Similarly, a character in a video game is forced to repeat the same existence for ever, reliving the same scenario after each 'game over'."
Nirvana is set at Christmas, 2005, when a virus attacks the Nirvana programme, a video game designed by computer programmer Jimi (Christopher Lambert, The Hunted, Highlander III). As a result, the game's hero, Solo (Diego Abatantuono), develops consciousness, becoming aware of being a virtual character in an imaginary world, doomed to repeat the same predetermined actions for all eternity. He asks Jimi to release him by deleting the game from the system.
Jimi, whose own life also seems emp-ty after his girlfriend Lisa (Emmanuelle Seigner, La sourire, Pourvu que ca dure) leaves him, decides to help his creation. With the aid of hacker supreme Joystick (Sergio Rubini, Prestazione straordinaria, La stazione) and hardware expert Naima (Stefania Rocca, Non ci resta che piangere), Jimi attempts to hack into the data banks of the conglomerate where Nirvana's master copy is stored.
Nirvana is being aimed at the international market. Financing for its below-the-line budget of $14 million came partly through UK sales outfit Capitol Films and France's Davis, which, says producer Maurizio Totti, "allowed for a big budget by Italian standards and consequently, the freedom to follow through with big ideas".
Totti describes Nirvana's development as "long and laborious". Salvatores, whose feature credits include Sud (1993), Puerto escondido (1992) and Marrakech Express (1989), took two years to write the screenplay with Gloria Corica and Pino Cacucci. Locations were scouted in Morocco and India, before Salvatores opted to shoot during the spring and summer of last year in the 140,000 square metre plant of a former Alfa Romeo factory in Milan.
"Salvatores and I researched the European vision of the future - because it does exist and it's quite distinct from the American one," says production designer Giancarlo Basili, who cites Hieronymus Bosch, MC Escher and Pop Art as influences. "We tried to use the original structures of the location as much as possible, retaining its architectural faults because we were interested in contamination."
Basili stresses the opportunity Nirvana gave an Italian designer to work with Italian effects technology. Milanese effects house Digitalia Graphics, a division of the UK's Digital Arts, worked on Nirvana for seven months, creating 80 effects total-ling 10 minutes. Computer graphics, says Basili, have until now "been regarded as the exclusive province of the Americans".
But Salvatores warns against relying too heavily on effects technology. "The creation of images and even storylines is gradually shifting from the set to the post-production studio and you need to find a balance," he says. "Visual effects simply mean more colours on your palette. If what you're painting isn't interesting, you can have as many colours as you like and still no one will care to look at it."
Salvatores, who also acknowledges the influence of cult sci-fi writer Philip K Dick, describes Nirvana as "a giant step" away from Italian comedies such as Mediterraneo, with which he says he is frustrated.
"I have had to resign myself to [comedy's] inadequacies. Contemporary reality cannot be described with traditional language. I don't know exactly where to go, but it's important to try to find a turning point, to leave for new territories." Adam Minns
Prod cos: Cecchi Gori, Colorado Film
Prods: Vittorio Cecchi Gori, Rita Cecchi Gori, Maurizio Totti
Dir: Gabriele Salvatores
Scr: Gabriele Salvatores, Gloria Corica, Pino Cacucci
Ph: Italo Petriccione
Art dir: Giancarlo Basili
Cos: Patrizia Chericoni, Florence Emir
Ed: Massimo Fiocchi
Cast: Christopher Lambert, Diego Abatantuono, Sergio Rubini
Running time: 102 mins
Int sales: Capitol Films
