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Before Star Wars, before Raiders of the Lost Ark, before American Grafitti, there was . . . THX 1138.
George Lucas' first movie is a startling vision of a dystopian, Orwellian future--a cold-blooded technocratic society in which the state exercises mind control over its human citizens by means of thought-manipulating drugs and in which all human beings are slaves to the soulless, inhuman, mechanistic social order. A scary and thought-provoking movie, I think it presents a remarkable sequence of startling visions of a world in which soulless, cold-blooded technology controls and intrudes upon human lives to such an inordinate degree as to completely crush the human spirit--a world in which individuality, identity, passion and emotion are crushed by an inhuman state.
Especially scary and fascinating is a sequence in which the hero, Robert Duvall, finds himself in some sort of test-lab environment and discovers he has no will of his own--that his autonomic functions have been taken over by scientists cold-bloodedly experimenting on him from a distance--pushing buttons and dispassionately conversing about him while his body twists and contorts to various positions against his own will, in obedience to the electronic signals dispatched from the control panel.
Also scary is the Orwellian depiction of the state's intervention into romance and love--how the forbidden romance between Duvall and his girlfriend is ruthlessly crushed by state regulation and how Duvall finds himself running from the law because he has violated state sanctions against passionate romance and eroticism. Rather than submit to the state-regulated breeding program, Duvall flees, finally emerging from the subterranean technological nightmare that is his world, to confront the setting sun.
George Lucas' first movie is a startling vision of a dystopian, Orwellian future--a cold-blooded technocratic society in which the state exercises mind control over its human citizens by means of thought-manipulating drugs and in which all human beings are slaves to the soulless, inhuman, mechanistic social order. A scary and thought-provoking movie, I think it presents a remarkable sequence of startling visions of a world in which soulless, cold-blooded technology controls and intrudes upon human lives to such an inordinate degree as to completely crush the human spirit--a world in which individuality, identity, passion and emotion are crushed by an inhuman state.
Especially scary and fascinating is a sequence in which the hero, Robert Duvall, finds himself in some sort of test-lab environment and discovers he has no will of his own--that his autonomic functions have been taken over by scientists cold-bloodedly experimenting on him from a distance--pushing buttons and dispassionately conversing about him while his body twists and contorts to various positions against his own will, in obedience to the electronic signals dispatched from the control panel.
Also scary is the Orwellian depiction of the state's intervention into romance and love--how the forbidden romance between Duvall and his girlfriend is ruthlessly crushed by state regulation and how Duvall finds himself running from the law because he has violated state sanctions against passionate romance and eroticism. Rather than submit to the state-regulated breeding program, Duvall flees, finally emerging from the subterranean technological nightmare that is his world, to confront the setting sun.
Last edited by Django; 08-04-03 at 05:06 PM.
