Equilibrium
| State of body | Peaceful, though with signs of recent struggle. Fair condition. |
|---|---|
| Detail of inspection | Inspected once. |
| Forensic Investigator | shellshear |
| Comments | Potentially challenging, but in the end, a straightforward case. Not nearly as novel as the setup might have suggested. |
Equilibrium is a reimagining of Fahrenheit 451 (by way of 1984 and The Matrix) in the same way that “28 Days Later” is inspired by “Day of the Triffids”. The central conceit is the same: that emotion/passion has been deemed the cause of ills facing society, and must therefore be suppressed by destroying the cause (books/things that aren’t grey) using chemicals, indoctrination, and ruthless force, on a mostly subdued populace. The main character, an especially potent law enforcer, is tempted into trying the forbidden fruit, goes through a crisis of conscience (viewed with suspicion, and exposed, by a competing law enforcer), and joins the resistance.
It suffers several of the same flaws as Fahrenheit 451. In both cases, the central premise is never quite made convincing enough: the argument (emotions/books are bad for humanity) is constructed merely to be knocked down, and is done so after an entirely unconvincing defence by the main character’s superior. We’re left in no doubt, right from the first moment we see the rebels, that they are on the side of rightness and that society needs to be deconstructed to be saved. Straw men have rarely been so fragile.
Alright, I’m going to stop comparing it to Fahrenheit 451 now. Equilibrium makes a fair swing of the fist at an emotionless future, at least at first: nuclear war is cleverly used to explain why people came to think that emotion (particularly anger and hate) might be a lousy idea, and that the sacrifice of other emotions would be worth it to stop that kind of thing happening again. The trouble is, that’s where the defence of the emotionless stops, and that’s the source of most of my disappointment with the film.
We’re shown that the monks have been trained to be calm in a fight; that their training allows them to predict trajectories and patterns in attackers and to take advantage of them. Cool idea – ridiculous, but sold well enough to easily excuse it. There’s a missed opportunity here. Surely, such techniques, which predict behaviours of enemies, would be very different for a group of rebels than for a group of soldiers. Perhaps these techniques would only work if the person is utterly calm. These restrictions would have added a great deal of interest to the many fights – the main character, as he gets more emotional, would have more and more trouble doing the moves, and would be at a loss against a group of unemotional monks or soldiers. This would have made his plight considerably more perilous, made the unemotional state more frightening. Perhaps it really is more effective; a passionless person would beat an emotional one in a fight every time, and he has to go back on the drugs – recognizing that in defence of emotion, he has to lose his own (as is implied with the leader of the resistance). Or perhaps, in the style of a martial arts film, he could relearn his fighting techniques to make emotion work for him, and find that, y’know, carefully channeled anger is scarily effective. Add a bit of darkness to the consequences: he gets mad, he wins, he remembers that all this fightin’ stuff was the reason society chose lack of emotions in the first place. Or the converse: that because lack of passion doesn’t stop any destruction (and in fact makes it more efficient), it’s not the problem. Themes that could have been brought out a little more.
And this is another important point. The transition from unemotional to emotional, though difficult for the main character, doesn’t hold much attention. He is torn: that emotion stuff is heady, he doesn’t want to let it go, but it’s illegal and he is terribly law-abiding – aw, stuff it. I would have enjoyed it more had he suffered some of the negative effects of emotion. His wife died, for example, and coming off the drugs could release such powerful grieving he could have been justified in retreating straight back on them. And we’d understand. Emotions are difficult. It would have made his eventual decision more powerful, for acknowledging that despite the pain, it’s still worth it.
It would have been interesting, too, to see some admission that lack of emotion can be good sometimes. Perhaps he’s running from the authorities with a group of rebels. Someone is paralysed with fear, or panicked (perhaps even him, with all these powerful new-found emotions) and are rescued by someone with a calm, clear head. In a sense, we see this near the climax. The main character is attached to the polygraph, and goes completely calm in a cool but rather puzzling way, and then kicks arse.
There are little touches that undercut the premise. The leader delivers rather passionate speeches. It still strikes an odd note when we first see the speech (We later discover that he’s a computer simulation, which makes this fact even odder). It calls into question exactly what is being suppressed, just when the setup should be solidifying the rules so that breaking them can be the more shocking later on. The speeches should have been delivered passionlessly, with perfect calm. Obviously, this would have been mind-numbingly tedious, which I think shows it should have happened with the main characters doing things in the foreground (much as Brazil does a great deal of world-building in the background, particularly with the use of posters). We’re not clear about which emotions are being suppressed: sure, the obvious big face-effecting ones: love, hate, passion, despair. Is irritation suppressed? If so, what a marvelous method for detecting people who are off their medication: tap your fingers, crack your knuckles, whistle tunelessly for hours on end. Anyone who objects is clearly naughty. What about satisfaction? The other monk certainly seems rather smug when he captures the main character.
The twist was executed pretty well. The main character was acting so irrationally, so obviously affected by emotions, that it was difficult to see why he wasn’t picked up on the first day. It made sense, then, that they knew all along what he was going to do, and was letting him do it just so that he would expose the underground movement (if a little puzzling. The way the plan resolved, with him revealing them all in order to get close to the Leader, was rather arcane if that’s what the authorities were setting up). I was expecting the underground movement to attack the drug supply, to be honest, to spike it or render it harmless, or to reveal that the main character had been on fake drugs for a week or two before he stopped taking them (and was thus a setup of the resistance rather than the authorities). It would have been particularly interesting if the authorities had done the same, or spiked it with a drug to bring on anger and hatred, and then sparked a riot amongst the unaccustomed-to-emotion masses – just to demonize the rebels and show the destructiveness and evils of emotion.
There is something to be said for the directness of the actual film. Like Fahrenheit 451, it casts the debate in simple, black-and-white terms. The authorities are bad, the rebels are good, the System is Wrong. Nothing wrong with that. All these suggestions would dilute that message, but I think they’d also make the argument more meaningful. And for me, that’s much more interesting.