It’s hard to view George Lucas other than through the
prism of the cinematic universe he created and ruled for forty years, and
clearly George thinks the same which is why he recut both the Star Wars trilogy
but also this film in 2004. I remember the film as claustrophobic and with an
empty feel that the addition of computer generated special effects compromises:
the dystopia of 1971 did not include such details.
With or without the superfluous explosions and mechanisms
added to this antiseptic world, this film still packs a darker punch even than
the Force used by Sith lords. It’s George’s first album and a full-scale remake
of his 1967 University of Southern California's film school graduation film,
produced by Francis Ford Coppola who clearly knew talent when he saw it.
Late sixties dystopian visions have a nostalgia all their
own – the future isn’t what is used to be – but in other ways perhaps fifty
years hasn’t changed our prospects that much. THX 1138’s vision of a 25th
Century in which mankind is controlled by a metallic intelligence and medicated
into compliance within an ordered society is a chilling one. We never see the
actual rulers of this society only the robotic police force that keeps order on
a physical level and the priests controlling the spiritual elements – the
opiate of the masses is administered in confession booths featuring a projected
image of a medieval Jesus and a calming robotic voice that probes the faithful
for information as they confess…
But these machines still need people and even
reproduction has been taken out of our hands as people are grown in
laboratories and traditional methods are not only outlawed but desire is
suppressed by prescribed chemicals. Men still make machines though and THX 1138
(Robert Duvall) is one of those working on the dangerous assembly line
producing the robo-cops who keep order.
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| Retro-fitted assembly line? |
Every so often accidents happen and his team is
congratulated on only losing 195 lives over the last period, far less than a
neighbouring group. It’s not so much about safety as productivity.
Others work at the city’s CCTV control centre including
THX’s roommate LUH 3417 played by Maggie McOmie who, in a cast of shaven heads,
looks especially stark with her red suede head and bright orange eyebrows, her skin
conveying the vulnerability of humans in this synthetic, sharp-edged
environment.
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| Donald being pleasant? |
SEN 5241 (Donald Pleasence as quietly unsettling as
always) also works in surveillance and as with LUH, has a mind that sees
through the chemical constraints of their routines. In LUH’s case, she wants to
free THX from his drug-induced submission and to make a real connection with a
man she actually, despite all conditioning, loves. She substitutes placebos for
his daily medication and before too long he is feeling something different for
her too… one thing leads to another and in place of holographic porn he is soon
far more concerned with his real woman.
SEN meanwhile has been playing the system and hacking
into the city computers to get himself assigned as a replacement roommate for
THX. Quite what his motivation is we can only guess but it’s not a move THX
welcomes and he reports SEN for the breach even as his own transgressions are
under investigation: namely illicit reproductive activity with LUH.
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| Maggie McOmie |
THX is tried and sent to a prison resembling an
antiseptic Todd Browning’s Freaks; the inmates all being marooned in beds
amidst a seeming eternity of disorientating bright lights. SEN is here as well
with more grand schemes of escape, when the time is right… THX can’t be doing
with strangeness and prevarication and eventually heads off into the light with
an increasingly timid SEN in tow. They encounter an escaped holograph named SRT
(Don Pedro Colley) and soon find the crowded “real world” of the city; citizens
being forced through corridors like blood through clotted veins.
From this point on it’s a race to avoid the robot coppers
and to find their way out, if they have the courage and belief…
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| Robert Duvall |
Dusty Verdict:
THX 1138 is all a far cry from Star Wars swashbuckling but even this
film begins with some footage from Buster Crabbe in Buck Rodgers, an influence on the later film and used here to show
how the future of the Thirties has been replaced with darker possibilities.
More time has passed between THX and the present day and the film looks far
more likely than Flash Gordon and his
ilk.
All credit for Lucas in what is essentially a stripped-down
prison escape movie with sci-fi trimmings: THX must find himself through the
truth of his and humanity’s existence and that’s a pretty timeless fable that’s
little in need of CGI upgrading.
Robert Duvall, soon to feature in his producer’s Godfather, gives a superb performance,
managing to convey vulnerability at the same time as the natural machismo of a
hero. Our Donald Pleasence plays a more straightforward character, a schemer
without THX’s ability to ultimately rise to the occasion: not everyone really
wants to escape. Maggie McOmie’s LUH is the one who really sees what freedom
could entail, almost a lone feminine voice in this film.
THX is, of course, readily available in its 2004 form on
BluRay and DVD, it’s worth catching the original version if you can find it for
purists and those who liked their vintage seventies future-scapes to be of
their time.
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