Roger Ebert was fond of referring to cinema as “a machine that generates empathy.” In the last few years, the term “empathy machine” has been co-opted by proponents of virtual reality technology. In the artist’s statement that accompanies his new VR installation Carne y Arena (Virtually Present, Physically Invisible), an ambitious attempt to digitally re-create the process of illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, Alejandro G. Iñárritu goes one step further, outlining not simply an urge to engender the viewer’s empathy, but a desire to prompt a full-bodied response through “direct experience.”

In interviews, Iñárritu has been wise to put some distance between the two mediums, telling The Hollywood Reporter that virtual reality is “[everything] cinema is not.” Elsewhere, in his artist’s statement, he explains that the intention of the project is “to explore the human condition in an attempt to break the dictatorship of the frame, within which things are just observed.” Setting aside the presumed sincerity of the enterprise, these statements reveal a key contradiction in Iñárritu’s thinking, and prove additionally telling of his conception of virtual reality and his understanding of cinema as both medium and machine.

By its very design, Carne y Arena—currently on view at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, following its premiere at last year’s Cannes Film Festival and stopover at the Fondazione Prada in Milan—endeavors to reconcile two seemingly incompatible extremes: the demands of commerce and the nuances of empathy. With regard to the former, it’s safe to say no expense was spared. At Cannes, the installation’s multi-room configuration was constructed inside an airplane hangar; in its current iteration the work is housed within LACMA’s premium-priced Broad Contemporary wing. (As I’ve only seen the LACMA exhibition, the following observations will be limited to what I experienced—though on the evidence of festival reports, I’m proud to say that my walk-through, lacking both complimentary snacks and Perrier, was the more gruelingly authentic experience.) Comprised of a concrete-walled, temperature-controlled holding chamber, a dirt-lined warehouse where barefoot viewers are strapped into a VR harness, and a dimly lit corridor flanked on either side by an actual piece of the border wall and a procession of video monitors featuring testimonials from the real-life immigrants who inspired Iñárritu, the exhibition is at once impressively staged and tactlessly conceived.

Coming from a director whose recent films (namely Birdman and The Revenant) have traded the narrative complexities of his early work for technical acrobatics and sensory overload, this is hardly surprising. Only a self-styled auteur with high-art aspirations could earnestly devise such an elaborate installation while systematically reducing its message to a series of setpieces and loaded binaries. Its parenthetical subtitle alone is an affront to thematic subtly, to say nothing of the egregious “U.S. / T.H.E.M.” acronym that graces the exhibit’s logo: a heart-shaped map of the border with arteries tracing the region’s topography.

After signing a two-page waiver exempting the museum from legal liability, you’re escorted into the frigid detention chamber, replete with knee-high metal benches, tattered shoes, and stray objects gathered from the Sonoran Desert. Instructions on the wall tell you to remove your shoes and place them in an adjacent locker for safe-keeping, and to wait for an alarm to sound, signaling you to enter the next room. At this point you presumably should already be in a state of contemplation, reflecting on the harrowing journey thousands of immigrants have embarked upon only to be shuttled unceremoniously into a similar holding cell. Here you sit just long enough for the temperature to turn vaguely disagreeable before a siren wails and you approach the main attraction: a near-vacant room covered in sand. (Iñárritu’s title translates to Meat and Sand. I’ll let your imagination run wild with what the meat might be.) Across the way two technicians await to strap you into a backpack and helmet; proceeding to explain the realistic dimensions of your forthcoming experience, they assure you that they’ll be shadowing you throughout the six-and-a-half minute simulation, in case you become overwhelmed by Iñárritu’s vision and decide to dart off across the desert and into a wall.