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Equilibrium
***
Cinema
Reviews - Week of March 21, 2003
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 15. USA/UK.
107 minutes. Written and directed by Kurt Wimmer. Starring Christian Bale,
Emily Watson, Taye Diggs, Angus MacFadyen, Sean Bean, Matthew Harbour, William
Fichtner, Dominic Purcell, Maria Pia Calzone, Emily Siewert, Alexa Summer,
Christian Kahrmann, Sean Pertwee.
Long, bitter lists could be written of all the
problems in "Equilibrium", starting with the opening scene.
The movie takes place after nuclear war, when the totalitarian government
of Father (Sean Pertwee) has made all forms of human emotion illegal. Background
is explained to us through tacky bullet points on the screen, with text that
emphasises 'Man's inhumanity to Man!' and 'War!' We're less than a minute
in, and I'm thinking, gimme a break already.
The movie follows its dystopian culture's police
force, whose job it is to make sure that citizens are injecting themselves
with the chemical Librium, which turns them into obedient, unfeeling sheep.
Christian Bale stars as a high-ranking 'cleric', so dedicated to the cause
that he shrugged off his wife's arrest a few years ago and is happy, at the
beginning of the story, to report his partner for 'sense offence'. Problem
is, he's having doubts about the system. He stops taking the emotion drugs
and sees things in a whole new light. Instead of seeking out the terrorists
who destroy chemical factories and hunting down the criminals who store banned
works of art and antiquity, he now wants to use his position of power to
help the resistance.
Sounds clear enough, and given that the material
rips off such airtight sources as "1984", "Brave New World", "Farenheit 451"
and "The Matrix", you would think it could be genuinely powerful. But boy,
it's... well, it's silly. How is it that rubble crowds the settings, and
most streets are still in ruins from the bomb, and yet apartment blocks look
just fine on the inside and technology is more sophisticated than our own?
How do people come to judgements if they are not thinking? The idea of all
emotion being absent makes the concept of marriage impractical, and renders
nonsensical simple sentences like "I'm pleased to be doing this." And how
is it that the government seems to have an endless archive of surveillance
footage from anywhere and everywhere, and yet we never see a security camera,
and Bale is free to work against his colleagues as long as none of them are
in the immediate area?
The plot holes are so obvious, and so
all-encompassing, that a funny thing happens. We stop thinking about them,
lest we drive ourselves crazy in frustration, and the movie starts to work.
It's the opposite effect of "Minority Report" -- the Spielberg picture was
artful and ingenious, and its moments of flaw and distance ended up calling
attention to themselves. "Equilibrium" is such nonsensical trash that its
strengths catch us off guard, getting us unreasonably involved. Its lack
of care is stupid, but liberating.
The look of the picture is fascinating; it's overcast
by strange, washed-out, faintly greenish tones, and the epic sets, mixing
apocalyptic clutter with clean and precise columns of invention, have a certain
beauty. The action scenes revolve around some sort of methodical kung-fu
dance used by cops to predict the trajectory of gunfire, avoid it, and respond
with quick and perfect moves that will obliterate all enemies. Kids who play
cops-and-robbers games imagine themselves to have brilliant moves that will
make them invincible -- every turn of the hand is a perfect aim. "Equilibrium"
is thrilling in the way it uses special effects and editing to bring that
kind of fantasy to life.
Much of the film's effectiveness depends on Bale,
who has an above average ability to pull off a look of inner turmoil without
seeming to do anything with his face. He doesn't have to overreach; there
is a strange mix of emotions to his natural look, and he retains it even
when his gaze is unnervingly steely. We're never quite sure if the character
is crumbling or fully in control, until Bale uses the slightest of ticks
to tip us off. Emily Watson is good, too, as a woman who rebels against the
Father system by daring to feel passion; she's another actor who carries
a certain strangeness, and belies it with sex appeal and an aura of deep
emotion. We can believe her as someone raised in an warped atmosphere, who
has struggled through and recently emerged as a creature of
fire.
Taye Diggs, Angus MacFadyen, Sean Bean, William
Fichtner and Sean Pertwee are also in the cast, but let's not lose the point.
There are plenty of crappy movies with good actors, and familiar faces are
not the key to saving lousy material. "Equilibrium" is goofy to the core,
refuses to admit it on the surface and ended up convincing me to go with
the flow. You could rant at me for hours all the reasons it sucks, and I'd
probably agree with most of them -- but the point is, I had fun. Would I
rush out to see it again? Let's not go overboard.
COPYRIGHT©
2003 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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