THX–1138 : Mini Movie Review
I Finally got around to watching THX-1138 today.
For pictures and another review you can check out the THX-1138 Review @ Cyberpunkreview.com.
Overview:
Society is controlled through surveillance and emotion supressing drugs. Our protagonists start changing their dosages and start feeling and experiencing “grotesque sexual behaviour and feelings” and aren’t performing to efficiency. While exploring these new feelings they are discovered and are treated, because they can be dealt with to budget. Society is run to budgets and efficiency is paramount to the proper functioning of society.
Interesting bits:
- Sounds effect are very much like star wars, the car and motorbike noises are the precursor to speederbikes and x-wings. Also the radio voices is the same effect heard later in Star Wars and “Empire Strikes Back”
- Robot Police Guards also look like the inspiration for Storm Troopers.
- Society must supress emtions with Drugs (Looks like Equilibrium borrows this idea THX-1138).
So, for 1971 this would have been an “out there” film. Cyberpunk review mentions it’s a great low budget film, and I would have to agree. Now, the ending is not really an ending. I am trying to think whether this is a 70s thing, or just a anticlimatic, welcome to “here we are” .. and the future needs to unfold in the mind of the audience.
The mentioned similarities to Equilibrium are basically
- Drug controlled society, where people must take their medicine to supress unwanted human emotions or be in violation of the law
- Sparse, uninteresting living quarters and work spaces .. in the interest of efficiency
But the two diverge on the enforcement and escape from the system. Equilibrium is a very action oriented, active resistance with destructive overthrow, whereas THX-1138 seems to explore the nature of humanity, the anomalies which occur and lanslide into disobediance from the state.
My recollections of why protagonists feelings change differ from Cyberpunk review. To me, it seemed that the woman LUH, starting feeling different and reduced or changed hger medication (although at the begining, both were seen in front of their medicine cabinets in violation). This in sense, is the biblical Genesis story of Eve (LUH) starting tempting with the metaphorical apple (by reducing THX-1138 medicine) to make him feel.
While the movie is slow, and no real sountrack and ambience .. it conveys the controlled society, standardised approach to everything, and that anomalies occur .. and in more than one place to destabilise the system. Interesting (and innovative for 1971) use of effects, coupled with societal paranoia make a good story. It strikes me of a precursor to the cyberpunk genre, a little like Metropolis, but worth watching.
Rating: 7/10