Upon reading too many articles on Wikipedia on subjects that he was not ready to handle, our “hero” Arvie decides that the modern age of the world is the one that he would most like to freeze in time, and he logically decides that if freezing the age, he must too freeze his own age, as not to air by preserving an era tied to the passing fancies associated with growing up.
Filled with the Spirit of Des Esseintes, modern consumerism, and Emile Zola, the death of the ones closest to him encourages him to gather all the worldly things he loves, and barricade himself in his isolated cottage in the wilds of Newfoundland.
Crates of the finest consumables of our age, the ones preferred by 18 year olds, are brought in by the truckload. Ramen, Chef Boyardee, Carlo Rossi wine, Olde English, the most delectable easily-appreciated sort of Canadian “home grown” marijuana. Along with the food, the pleasures of the age are brought in as well, in quantities large enough to prepare our Boy-Prince to remain alone and isolated forever, in a world devised by his own “nature,” a paradise that he can always appreciate. Cravats and DVDs filled with (dubbed) Naruto episodes. Fleshlights with the most modern attachments. Pornography filmed in every corner on earth.
With enough foresight to know that he must preserve his age if he is to forever love his “paradise,” Boy-Prince Arvie makes the difficult decision to eliminate modern information from his household. There will be no daily papers. No internet. Only books he has already read. Anything that could give him new ideas has been eliminated. In his paradise, there can be no change. Stagnation is essential for any measurable paradise; one of Arvie’s smarter friends on a message board once told him that. His one lifeline to the outside world is a printed out copy of the entirety of Wikipedia, circa 2007.
Knowing that being cut off from the natural world, natural in the truest sense, might mean an inability to keep himself at his current state, he decides that some of nature needs to be in his house with him. Arvie brings in a couple of squirrels and bushes, knowing that encountering nature regularly is important in being able to appreciate the artificialities to life.
Things begin well. It is pornography and ramen for days on end. As the months rack up, fleshlights have been worn out, and squirrels have been befouled in the most worrying ways. Without the ability to obtain new clothes, nor mend his old clothing, Arvie wears nothing but a single cravat, and a strategically placed squirrel skin,; the hide of the first animal he fucked to death.
Malnutrition means that Arvie balloons in weight, and it is not too long before all the furniture in the house is either soiled with urine and feces or bent completely out of shape into uncomfortable positions. In a frightful episode in the summer, dysentery causes an obese Boy-Prince to completely crush the toilet in his bathroom; a water balloon of porcelain sodomy and feces flooding the room.
The bent up furniture means Arvie is walking around hunched over. A nightmare episode on his bed, springs punching through, has him envisioning himself being set upon a bed of pins by the Inquisition. Sores cover his bottom, and hair everything else, but Arvie continues to fight on, knowing that return to the real world is no longer possible. He would be laughed to death by his peers, by society. He continues soldiering on in his “paradise.”
Things go from grim to grimmer. As winter comes on, Arvie finds that he has filled everything in the house with shit. Once the toilet broke, he sought out unorthodox solutions. In December, he goes to turn on the stove for heat, discovering, odorously, that he filled the stove with human shit some months back. Arvie has to make the painful decision, choosing between his pride, his paradise, or cooking an oven of shit.
The film ends with Arvie breaking down his front door, wearing nothing but a cravat and a black, cassock-like sheet. He walks up a nearby highway exit, onto an overpass, and hangs himself from it with his cassock, which he is naked underneath, because WE ARE METAPHORICALLY ALL NAKED UNDER OUR CASSOCKS. As anyone that has read conflicting reports of hangings knows, the last thing a hanging man does before he dies is orgasm. Or maybe shits. I forget. Either way, Arvie orgasms and shits onto the overpass below, just happening to hit the vehicle of the ONE WOMAN that could have loved him upon exiting his paradise. If he had instead waited a few moments on the overpass and waved at cars, he would have found the one true love of his life, and his past adventure would have been forgotten. But because of his hasty demeanor, he found SUICIDE.
