Equilibrium: A Bush Like Vision of the Future
Equilibrium is a film which escaped my attention during it’s short stint in the theaters, so I didn’t see it until it came out on DVD. It was pleasantly surprising in some respects, disappointing in others, and disturbing in how it reminded me of the message and tone of the Bush-Cheney regime. This is a sci-fi film which borrows heavily in imagery and structure from many other films in that genre, yet does manage a small level of originality.
The opening sequence is reminiscent of Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. Anachronistic images of destruction from World War 2, as well as images of Hitler, Stalin, and Saddam Hussein are assembled in a somewhat random montage while a narrator tells of a third world war which occurred sometime in the early 21st century. The survivors built a new theocratic society which suppresses emotion in order to eliminate the causes of violence and war. Each day, citizens are required to take a dose of “Prozium”, a sort of futuristic prozac which, combined with state-controlled media, keep the people anesthetized and obedient. The city is clean yet very gray, a tidier version of Blade Runner with obvious references to Orwell’s 1984.
Christian Bale plays one of the lead clerics of the theocracy, charged with enforcing the law and executing “sense offenders” (which seems to be a play on the term “sex offenders”). However, when he misses a dose of Prozium, he begins to feel emotions and gets hooked on it. Eventually he joins the resistance, and helps them to defeat the theocracy.
One of the more original elements in the film is the use of a hybrid martial art called “gun-kata”, which appears to blend several martial arts disciplines, including Samuri sword-fighting, with the use of automatic hand-guns. Some of the fight choreography is the best I’ve seen since The Matrix. However, there is one scene in which Christian Bale fights a bunch of government soldiers in a large hall reminiscent of the Neo and Trinity gunfight in the government building towards the end of The Matrix. And Christian Bale’s black priest-warrior outfit and slicked-back hair makes him look a bit too similar to the Neo character in The Matrix Reloaded. I was glad they didn’t try to mimic the bullet-time effect which has quickly become a banal cinematic card-trick.
Unlike Keanu Reeves, Christian Bale can actually act, and he does a credible job portraying a man who has never had emotions experiencing feelings for the first time. Sean Bean, Emily Watson, and Angus MacFadyen are all fine actors who don’t get enough screen time. Unfortunately, Taye Diggs turns in a stale performance, but he can hardly be blamed for being given such a flat character. Ultimately, the film suffers from focusing too much on it’s style, and despite the thoughtful message behind the story, it suffers from a lack of character development. Despite the enormous scale of the city and the masses of extras who form the populace, the film seems a bit claustrophobic at times and lacks depth.
The most chilling things about the post-apocolyptic future of Equilibrium are the echoes of the Bush-Cheney regime and American society today. We already live in a country that is addicted to drugs like Prozac that help us to not experience emotional highs and lows. We already live in a society where the media is controlled by a small handful of megacorporations, which is not that much different than a state-controlled media. And America is ruled by a regime that is highly theological, and which demands obedience and blind faith. Bush has admitted that he had a dream that God told him to smite Afganistan and Iraq, so he did. And Bush is vehemently using the so-called Justic Department (headed by the conservative theologian John Ashcroft) to crack down on political dissidents, Arabs, and to push the agenda of the Christian Coalition. If you talk about the wrong things on the internet, Ashcroft will put you in jail, and can hold you there indefinitely without charging you with anything. The idea of prosecuting “sense-offenders” is really not that far off from what is already happening.
Yet, in real life, it is unlikely that an individual using martial arts will rescue us from the path of theological fascism. Real political movements are formed at the grassroots level, with people from a wide range of disciplines communicating ideas and taking action. Democracy thrives on communication, and as Christian Bale shot out the television broadcasts at the end of Equilibrium, we must smash the corporate stranglehold on mass media. Though it may seem a Herculean task, this is one area where an individual can strike back at the Bush-Cheney theocracy. Websites such as MoveOn.org, TrueMajority.org, and WorkingForChange.com allow individuals to use “net-kata” to take action and make a difference. Right now, it may be the best chance we’ve got.
Related posts:
- Film and the Future: Media After September 11
- The Future a Long Time Ago: Attack of the Clones
- Does the Matrix Already Have Us?
- From Reagan, With Bush
- Michael Moore Is Turning Up the Heat
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