I remembered the last movie I felt this way: It was "Dark City". Both movies are perfect for a movie buff like me, for someone that has a highway entirely dedicated to finding references in her brain. That highway sure was pretty high trafficked when I saw that movie.
The problem of this movie can be summoned up in one sentence: Kurt Wimmer stole from many other movies, but it does not seem to have anything original, so anyone who has seen all the movies and read all the book is not going to feel more enlightened than before.
The plot is simple. In a future world, after World War 3, the government has decided that wars and crime can be avoided when the basic reason for these awful things is eliminated – human emotion. Since our century has given birth to a huge number of psychopharmacology in order to restore emotional equilibrium, the actual implementation is not too difficult, and all the citizens of the fictional state of Libria are legally required to consume a drug called "Prozium" (how original, a portmanteau of Prozac and Valium!). Art is burned, as in Fahrenheit 451, so that a viewer actually gets the entertaining popcultural incidenct of seeing the Mona Lisa Flame Gunned in the week "The Da Vinci Code" came out (with rather bad reviews, as expected). The guardians of the no-emotions policy are so called Grammaton Clerics, a mixture of fascist special agents and Eastern martial arts warriors. Incidentally, Christian Bale also looks like Keanu Reeves – both look like they haven't eaten for a very long time, like their hair could use some washing, and like their black leather coats are actually connected to their bodies. The movie does not even try to hide the very obvious reference, the slogan is "forget the "matrix". Sadly, we can't. Neither could I forget what I always have to think when I see Bale: American Psycho.
The Aesthetics are entirely taken from the Matrix, or rather, they are the Matrix, seen through the eyes of Leni Riefenstahl. Director Wimmer knows how to set his fascist regime into a "good" light, and the architecture of the dystopian city looks like a Hitleresque or Stalinesque dream.
The "hero" of the movie, Grammaton Cleric John Preston (Christian Bale) is a true follower. His son looks like the nightmarish 1984 child, observing that his father follows the rules ("terror starts at home", revisited). Then, one day, he accidentally destroys his dose of Prozium. All of a sudden, all the killing and destroying of art is no longer OK, he has moral doubts, and also meets his "Julia" (I guess we all read 1984, did we not?), played by Emily Watson who is as haunting as ever, but definitely wasted on this movie. He decided to join the Underground, an anarchistic movement that collects art and tells him that the only way to overthrow the regime is killing the ominous "Father", who, according to director, is not an allegory to Orwell's "Big Brother" (although his enforcer is constantly seen on huge TV screens, spreading the propaganda) but a religious figure. Religious symbolism is pretty mixed up with the fascist symbolism, which is ironic once again but also terrifying if you take the cross-shaped swastikas that populate every flag and banner. For someone living in Austria, the picture evokes the Austro-fascism, long lost in international history books, the short period between 1933 and 1938 when Austria was a fascism without the help of Germany, a fascism based on Catholicism. It’s a relatively good movie, but the only reason to watch it is to feel smart because you get all the references. You can scream the books and movies at the screen for the entire 2 hours it takes – oh, that is so Matrix, come on, that is so 1984, oh, they took that from Fahrenheit. Still, the question remains whether or not the movie gets its on ironic. Once John Preston starts the revolution, war and violence ensure, so actually, the theory of the system might have been right after all. Also, this movie can not escape comparison to "Judge Dredd" because once again, the revolution starts with one man, and taking all the fascistic aesthetics of the movie, it does not look like a very leftist anarchist rebellion.
When Preston cries over Beethoven's "Symphony No.9 - Choral - Allegro ma non troppo, un poco maestoso" and realizes that we, as humanity, do not deserve to exist if we exterminate art and only live to create a new generation, we accept the message. But once again, every dystopia has to face the ultimate question – is this a possible scenario for the future? And I do not believe that it is one, because although Tom Cruise might be convinced that psychopharmacology is the reason for all evil, it is other sources from which new fascism seems to emerge. Aldous Huxley painted a society anaesthetized with happy drugs – this movie paints one were no one is happy, or craves to be. In a society where every little bit of energy is used up to create synthetic happiness, this scenario just isn't realistic.
The problem of this movie can be summoned up in one sentence: Kurt Wimmer stole from many other movies, but it does not seem to have anything original, so anyone who has seen all the movies and read all the book is not going to feel more enlightened than before.
The plot is simple. In a future world, after World War 3, the government has decided that wars and crime can be avoided when the basic reason for these awful things is eliminated – human emotion. Since our century has given birth to a huge number of psychopharmacology in order to restore emotional equilibrium, the actual implementation is not too difficult, and all the citizens of the fictional state of Libria are legally required to consume a drug called "Prozium" (how original, a portmanteau of Prozac and Valium!). Art is burned, as in Fahrenheit 451, so that a viewer actually gets the entertaining popcultural incidenct of seeing the Mona Lisa Flame Gunned in the week "The Da Vinci Code" came out (with rather bad reviews, as expected). The guardians of the no-emotions policy are so called Grammaton Clerics, a mixture of fascist special agents and Eastern martial arts warriors. Incidentally, Christian Bale also looks like Keanu Reeves – both look like they haven't eaten for a very long time, like their hair could use some washing, and like their black leather coats are actually connected to their bodies. The movie does not even try to hide the very obvious reference, the slogan is "forget the "matrix". Sadly, we can't. Neither could I forget what I always have to think when I see Bale: American Psycho.
The Aesthetics are entirely taken from the Matrix, or rather, they are the Matrix, seen through the eyes of Leni Riefenstahl. Director Wimmer knows how to set his fascist regime into a "good" light, and the architecture of the dystopian city looks like a Hitleresque or Stalinesque dream.
The "hero" of the movie, Grammaton Cleric John Preston (Christian Bale) is a true follower. His son looks like the nightmarish 1984 child, observing that his father follows the rules ("terror starts at home", revisited). Then, one day, he accidentally destroys his dose of Prozium. All of a sudden, all the killing and destroying of art is no longer OK, he has moral doubts, and also meets his "Julia" (I guess we all read 1984, did we not?), played by Emily Watson who is as haunting as ever, but definitely wasted on this movie. He decided to join the Underground, an anarchistic movement that collects art and tells him that the only way to overthrow the regime is killing the ominous "Father", who, according to director, is not an allegory to Orwell's "Big Brother" (although his enforcer is constantly seen on huge TV screens, spreading the propaganda) but a religious figure. Religious symbolism is pretty mixed up with the fascist symbolism, which is ironic once again but also terrifying if you take the cross-shaped swastikas that populate every flag and banner. For someone living in Austria, the picture evokes the Austro-fascism, long lost in international history books, the short period between 1933 and 1938 when Austria was a fascism without the help of Germany, a fascism based on Catholicism. It’s a relatively good movie, but the only reason to watch it is to feel smart because you get all the references. You can scream the books and movies at the screen for the entire 2 hours it takes – oh, that is so Matrix, come on, that is so 1984, oh, they took that from Fahrenheit. Still, the question remains whether or not the movie gets its on ironic. Once John Preston starts the revolution, war and violence ensure, so actually, the theory of the system might have been right after all. Also, this movie can not escape comparison to "Judge Dredd" because once again, the revolution starts with one man, and taking all the fascistic aesthetics of the movie, it does not look like a very leftist anarchist rebellion.
When Preston cries over Beethoven's "Symphony No.9 - Choral - Allegro ma non troppo, un poco maestoso" and realizes that we, as humanity, do not deserve to exist if we exterminate art and only live to create a new generation, we accept the message. But once again, every dystopia has to face the ultimate question – is this a possible scenario for the future? And I do not believe that it is one, because although Tom Cruise might be convinced that psychopharmacology is the reason for all evil, it is other sources from which new fascism seems to emerge. Aldous Huxley painted a society anaesthetized with happy drugs – this movie paints one were no one is happy, or craves to be. In a society where every little bit of energy is used up to create synthetic happiness, this scenario just isn't realistic.
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