Sunday, October 24, 2004
Equilibrium
It's been a while since sci-fi has examined a future where liberty is substantially restricted. The Matrix came close, but as it was not a perceptible restriction, humanity could not understand that it was worse off. Gattaca is the only recent example that comes to mind. Code 46 is a recent release that I believe also touches on the subject.
Equilibrium (listen to a clip of the soundtrack here is a pretty strong attempt at bringing us back to a psuedo-1984/Fahrenheit 451 future. WWIII, as expected, has occurred, and human emotions have been deemed the weakness that is our downfall. Because of this, in the city of Libria, to maintain equilibrium, all citizens must take a drug (by the clock) that repressed human emotion. To reinforce this, the government is in the process of hunting down and destroying any objects from the old days that may stir up any emotion.
The near relative of 1984's Big Brother, Father, watches over the populace and preaches the word of un-feeling. The punishment for sense-crime is harsh, and is quickly elevated to instant execution during the course of the movie. In order to exact Father's word, there is a line of uber-hardcore soldiers, known as Grammaton Clerics. A cleric's job is to route out sense-offenders, and when the movie opens, they are currently closing in on the last remnants of the resistance.
However, after executing his own partner for sense-crime, Cleric John Preston (Christian Bale)accidentally destroys his dose of the un-feeling drug, and begins to sense the world around him. Preston's wife was executed several years past, and the arrest of another pretty lady (Emile Watson) begins to stir the now un-caged emotions in him. His new partner, played by Tay Diggs, obviously catches on quick, although I found Preston's awakening to be a little too obvious.
After contacting the resistance, Preston is given an impossible goal: kill Father
Anyway, if you'd like to see an interested re-thinking of Fahrenheit 451, with a little bit of corny action put in (the Clerics train in Gun-kata, which maximizes pistol damage, or something), then Equilibrium is good choice for the evening. It's well shot, well-acted, and pretty-well actioned. Why can't we have more of this kind of sci-fi?
