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Classic Movie of the Week OnM - May 24, 2002
******* What's wrong? ............ Anonymous (one of the simplest of all simple questions, usually without any simple answer) ******* You are a true believer. Blessings of the state, blessings of the masses. Thou art a subject of the divine. Created in the image of man, by the masses, for the masses. Let us be thankful we have an occupation to fill. Work hard; increase production; prevent accidents, and... be happy. ............OOM ******* Yeah, right. Just gimme shelter, now. ............ Evil Clone (undoubably plagiarizing someone somewhere) ******* Last year at this time after the airing of the Buffy season finale, I offered up a recommendation for one of my all-time favorite films, Until the End of the World, by the great German director Wim Wenders. This choice, while undoubtably a masterwork, really was only tenuously linked to the subject matter or theme of The Gift. I mean, sure, there was the 'end of the world' thing, and there was the concept of a 'gift' that had some parallels in 'bringing vision to the blind', rather literally in the case of Wender's film. And, one of the major characters in UtEotW was a woman (played by actor Solveig Dommartin) of unusual demeanor and abilities. Plus, there was broody William Hurt, for a little Angel-like flavoring as a small nod to A:tS. Other than that, I just kinda stretched it to fit, just a mite. I'm going to do that again, I'm afraid. Frankly, a lot of the fault for this is ME's, since they manage to trip me up year after year and (very pleasantly) confound my expectations. This year was no exception, and since to the best of my knowledge, no one has yet made a movie out of Madeleine L'Engle's novel A Wrinkle in Time *, I'll just have to go with my original plan, and do the mite-y expanding-upon riff again. But it matters little, 'cause I've been wanting to find an excuse to recommend this movie since I first started the column last year, and this last week's ep (and the season overall) offers as good a connection as I am ever likely to find between it and the Buffyverse. This is a film that deals with addiction (but not the way you think) and loneliness (also with a twist) and sorrow and the need to escape from pain, to cast off numbness and apathy. Like Buffy, it falls within the genre of science fiction and fantasy, and adds a touch of horror (but also not in the typical way). There are even robots! This is a film that started when the director was very young, in fact still a film student. Much shorter and less polished than the eventual finished, feature length version, it nevertheless won an award at the 1967 National Student Film Festival. It also caught the attention of Francis Ford Coppola, who subsequently signed on to serve as its executive producer. The director has since moved on to become not only one of the United States' most admired contemporary filmmakers, he is an individual who like only a small number of others, has changed the nature of the cinematic arts irrevocably. It is therefore my great pleasure to recommend that you seek out and view the creative maiden voyage of director George Lucas, in his 1970/71 release, THX-1138. One of the first things that you notice about George's films is that he is a master of the visual. The man somehow gets these entire worlds to live and breathe in his mind and then, even more astoundingly, can take the way that they look down to the smallest, most trivial detail, and make it happen up there on the screen. You can compare the technical advances that took place in realizing the first Star Wars (now 'Episode IV') and then in the last or current one ('Phantom Menace' or 'Attack of the Clones') and clearly see the improvements, but the mind-vision itself is always there as the wellspring. Lucas always knows exactly what he wants to see, and only the mechanical, technical limits of the current day restrict him from bringing about his new realities. THX-1138 is an incredible film visually. There is little dialog, and frankly we don't really need that much, since virtually every single frame is rife with visual metaphor. Star Wars seemed to come as a bit of a surprise for both film critics and the general public, who mostly knew Lucas from American Graffiti and it's tale of cars and the philosophies of cruising as pertains to adolescents on the cusp of adulthood. Graffiti seemed deceptively 'simple', but it really wasn't. Just as with THX-1138, Lucas took the familiar aspects of his world and made it special. Rumor (and maybe fact) has it that George likes fast cars-- really fast cars. This led him to multiple run-ins with the local authorities, and in one nearly tragic accident, a near-miss with the ultimate authority, the reaper himself. Whether these altercations caused him to postulate the dystopian environment of his first theatrical creation, or whether he just thought it would be cool to do another extemporization on the 1984 oeuvre, it matters not-- the result clearly foreshadows his genius. The world of THX-1138 is an underground one, literally. It is a future society where failure to regularly use mind-altering drugs is a punishable offense, and sex is considered an unacceptable distraction from efficiency and is equally criminalized. People are all dressed the same, in simple, bland, white clothing, heads are kept shaved (both men and women, and again apparently to 'maximize efficiency') and life on the suface of the Earth is supposedly impossible. The title character, 'Thex' (Robert Duvall), as his mate calls him, is unhappy but doesn't really understand why-- there is just this vague sense of disquiet that will not leave him. His mate, LUH 3417 (Maggie McOmie) is in the same boat. Despite counseling from OOM, a Jesus-visaged 'spiritual leader' who is actually a computer-generated provider of directionless 'spoken' banalities and attempting to maintain his required dosages of sedatives in order to do his dangerous job, THX cannot find peace and contentment. He decides to stop taking the drugs, and LUH does the same. This leads them to commit another 'crime', which is the act of lovemaking. LUH ends up pregnant-- not a good idea in this world of unseen leaders (quite literally, we never see them, only hear their voices, which are humanly normal and very un-drugged sounding, but always visually disembodied) who don't take kindly to 'disruptive' elements from the masses. THX and LUH are arrested, and THX is sent to a detention center. Lucas cleverly twists around the concept so that instead of a close, confining space such as a jail cell, the detainees live in a vast, empty open expanse of white, with no walls-- or horizon, for that matter-- in sight. Another prisoner, SEN 5241 (Donald Pleasence, doing his usual quirky thing) is there with THX, because THX turned him in for illegally manipulating the computer system to try to get THX to leave LUH and move in with him. He bears no ill will towards THX, and in fact talks incessantly about escaping the underground world. They meet up with a third man, SRT, who refers to himself as being 'just a hologram' and who is also the only dark-skinned character in the entire universe, as far as we can tell. SRT helps THX and SEN to escape, but things don't go as planned. This movie was made in color, but a curious thing is that it behaves as if it were shot in black & white. The first several times that I saw it, I still owned only a B&W television, and the pervasive whites, pale greys, and occasional jarring dead blacks that were everywhere seemed to be intended to look exactly the way they did. I was stunned some years later to see the film again, and discover it was shot in color. This leads to a somewhat odd request on my part.. I would suggest that the first time you watch THX-1138 you attempt to turn the color control all the way off on your TV set, if it will allow you to do so. (You may need to decativate the 'auto-color' feature of your set if you currently have it engaged-- check the set's video menu. Also, if your set has a 'color temperature' setting, try placing it on 'medium' or 'warm'.) Be aware that if your TV is not properly color-calibrated, you will not be able to achieve a true B&W image on the screen, which is what you are trying to do. If not, of course you can just restore the normal color settings and go with them. If you can get a good black & white picture, watch it that way first, then watch it again later on in the normal color format. I'd be very interested to hear if your impression parallels with mine. I won't spoil the ending, but you will certainly see a parallel with our Buffster in terms of the return of the hero to the world of 'normality'. The fates of other characters have their own resonances with the Buffyverse tricksters, addicts, and ordinary people of all stripes. Like Joss, George takes what should be an overdone motif and breathes new life and depth into it, making a deeply thought-provoking work that stands the test of time. This is one of my top ten all-time best-of's, and I expect it to stay there. Despite Lucas' later and greater complexities of technical regalia, there is much to be said for the virtue of simplicity. And, the deceptiveness of apparent simplicity is an even greater virtue, for in the words printed on the face of the hobo-bard-philosopher's acoustic guitar-- 'This machine kills hatred". Strange musics to my ears...
E. Pluribus Cinema, Unum, OnM
******* Technically way before Tomlinson Holman's Experiment: THX-1138 is notavailable on DVD, according to the IMDb and several other sources that I checked with-- bummer. I understand that there is a petition of sorts going on to get it released in the new format. Anyway, the review copy was on laserdisc, and the film is available on VHS, in (amazingly) both widescreen and pan'n'scan (cropped for standard TV's) versions. Please get the widescreen version if it is available-- the film was shot in 2.35:1 aspect ratio, and Lucas uses every bit of the frame to provide one stunning image after another, so don't cheat yourself. The film was released in either 1970 or 1971, depending on the source you go to, and runtime is a relatively short 1 hour and 35 minutes. The screenplay was written by George Lucas and Walter Murch, with some (uncredited) contributions of some kind by well-known SF writer Ben Bova. Cinematography was by Albert Kihn and David Myers, with film editing by George Lucas. Art Direction was by Michael D. Haller and costume design was by Donald Longhurst. As to the sound department, Jim Manson and Louis Yates provided the 'location sound', Walter Murch provided 'sound montage' and Dan Wallin was the scoring mixer. For someone now known to have greatly raised the bar in movie sound quality and effects, Lucas mastered THX-1138 in plain ol' monaural, an interesting choice. Done deliberately for a minimalist effect? To meet a tight budget? Only the Jedi master knows... Original music was by Lalo Schifrin Non-original music was by Johann Sebastian Bach (from 'St. Matthew Passion, BWV 244'), and Karl Hajos, Heinz Roemheld and Franz Waxman (from 'Buck Rogers (1940)') Cast:
Robert Duvall .... THX 1138 ******* Miscellaneous: Trivia item da 1st: Lucas shot the car chase scenes in San Francisco's BART subway system, which at the time was still under construction.
Trivia item the 2nd: In his film American Graffiti, the license plate of Paul Le Mat's roadster is THX 138.
Wanna see an early script for THX-1138? Well, sure ya do! Go here, and follow the links: http://www.lucasfan.com/thx1138/dvd.html
Wanna know more about THX, that is the movie theater sound and vision-y technical kinda THX? Go here, and likewise follow the links to suitably soundiferous enlightenment: http://www.thx.com/main.html RrrrrrrrrrrrrrruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuummmmmmmmMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!
*Re: M. L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time, the film. Apparently they are working on it, or a TV mini-series, or somesuch. This site gives some info: http://hometown.aol.com/kfbofpql/LEngl.html
******* Question of the Week:
Summer's here, movies there and everywhere. So whatcha watchin'? Post 'em if you... well, you know. Take care, and see ya next week!
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