I finally watched THX 1138… sort of.
I find myself in an interesting situation. I watched a bit over half of THX 1138 last night. Yes, I couldn’t finish it. I want to tell you the good about it, but everything that is coming to mind is rather harsh and caustic. The thing is… I did think it was pretty good! Somehow my disdain for George Lucas overrides the nice comments I want to make. So let me try to get some harshness out of the way and see if I can come back to a good point.
George Lucas is a terrible director. I realize I’m not a director, and there are many complicating factors that cause the job to be difficult, full of compromise, etc. The thing is I have a lot of trouble imagining a case where you grab an intelligent (and completely inexperienced) person off of the street, tell them to direct a film, and not get something better than a George Lucas film. I’m not being fair am I? I don’t think Lucas is worthless, I just think he has no idea how to take an interesting story and flush it out with compelling characters. What he does is take compelling caricatures and… leave them as that. It can work for some films. Superhero style films. Films that don’t give you a second to stop and think. Films more along the lines of carnival rides than literature or art.
Ok, I feel better. I think I can focus on the positive now. Lucas is a very good story crafter. If Lucas writes an outline for a movie, I bet most any of us that read the outline will think: Hey yeah, this could really be something! He’s a great idea man. It doesn’t matter that most of the ideas are derivative, they’re still engaging. Which leads me to THX 1138.
It is derivative, yes. It’s an almost-standard dystopia. As soon as you start you’re thinking of brave new world, 1984, etc. But that’s ok, because it is still creative. There’s a lot of slants that haven’t been done. Then ambiance and photography direction are excellent. The mood is set. The confusion and pain of the main character are well expressed through the confusion and pain the viewer is subjected to trying to figure out what is going on in the first fifteen minutes.
And I’ve run out of nice things to say again. If I was watching it with some friends I probably would have finished the film. As it was, I felt a re-run of family guy I’ve seen at least 5 times would be a better use of my time. Owch, I just can’t stop myself.
Ok, it wasn’t horrendous. Probably the most engaging part of the experience is watching and listening to things that would make their way into Star Wars eventually. The police had some long plastic looking batons that made lightsabre noises. A lot of the background chatter can be heard on the death star. There were some droid noises. Disturbingly the most evocative spot in the film was the sound of a citizen being beaten near the beginning. No, I don’t enjoy listening to people being beaten, but that specific sequence was sampled and used in Nine Inch Nails’ March of the Pigs, and I’d never known where it had come from.
THX 1138 would be a good film to study if you’re into cinema. I can’t call it a bad film despite all my scathing criticisms. If you’re a Star Wars fan and enjoy delving deeper into how things were made and evolved, it wouldn’t be bad to watch. I’m sure someone’s crafted a good drinking game out of it as well. As entertainment… I’d give it a pass. If you want to watch a drug-addled dystopian future I suggest Equilibrium. It’s much lighter and less artistic, but it’s also got character development, dialogue, pacing, and likable characters. Better yet, go read A Brave New World, or 1984.
My apologies to George Lucas. I have enjoyed many things you’ve been involved in. You should focus on teaming up with other people that have dissimilar strong points.
Popularity: 32% [?]
2 Comments
» Leave one of your ownRSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL
Comment by Nils Geylen — November 6, 2008 @ 6:33 am
That is a rather harsh review indeed. I have to say, looking back at my own review a while back, I was somewhat more positive.
However, while reading yours I have to admit that I agreed often enough as well. So I’m not sure where I stand. Perhaps in the middle, perhaps because I do like cinema and watched it from that point of view; I don’t think I would recommend this to anyone not interested in film who needs a movie to watch with mates on a Saturday night.
In case you’re interested, here is my post, in which I not so much review, as offer two possible sources of inspiration for this film. You’ll notice how my interest in “Cinema” becomes apparent then.
Hope you do manage to finish the film though, because it is in fact quite a good pic.
Comment by Alex — November 12, 2008 @ 9:53 am
I was very harsh, but the thing was, I didn’t hate it. I thought it was interesting and had a lot of merit… just not in the writing.
I think it comes down to Lucas being a visual person, with very little bleed over into any other senses. He paints a good pictures, and can convey emotion and action well without words. When he delves into the words, problems start cropping up.