EQUILIBRIUM (2002)

 

"Emotion is chaos."

  

 "Let me ask you something,
why are you alive?"

 

Equilibrium (2002) 

Directed by Kurt Wimmer

What happens when emotion is repressed for the sake of solidarity and an illusory sense of security and safety? But if one happens to still feel, can that feeling ever be restricted? If not, how will one restrain from emoting when it’s a matter of life or death to refrain?

In Equilibrium, Christian Bale plays John Preston, an ‘uncompromising’ cleric of death who in the year 2072, clinically eliminates people who appreciate art, music, experience love and physical sensation. Such people are known in Libria as "sense-offenders". Preston gives no quarter to anyone with feeling. He works for the Tetragrammaton Council and his occupation is to murder rebels with sense, most of whom live far outside of the city in what is referred to as the ‘Nether.' By receding to the netherworld, resistors hold on to their emotions by not consuming an obligatory pill called Prozium II. A typical science fiction ploy dating back to Huxley's grand mediator 'Soma' as consumed by the characters in Brave New World, Equilibrium's Prozium is an anesthetic that dulls all emotion.

Yet, one day when Preston is brushing his teeth, he accidentally breaks his vial of the emotion-suppressing green muck and develops an aversion. Gripped by sensation, he unconsciously stops his dose of Proz. As the film goes on and Preston decides to break protocol and abstain entirely. Throughout this period, viewers are exposed to the full progression of a stone-cold killer to a fully emotive, sympathetic, compassionate hero and the tremendous qualities not only of Preston's character arc, but Bale's phenomenal delivery of the role makes this early 2000's science-fiction movie stand the test of time.

Within days of stashing his Prozium II near the plumbing, unveiled to Preston is the complex web of astonishingly immoral actions that his boss, a ubiquitous totalitarian, leader-behind-the-wall type called DuPont is actualizing on the daily. That and the fact that Preston is DuPont's primary instrument, practically a master agent of executing text-book definition fascist killings that the so-called Father deploys. How can anything be considered immoral in an setting where human morality can be chemically wiped out? The only way such post-Prozium humans comprehend communication is through orders. But Preston's past that now. To continue the cliche of quoting the following brilliant quote of William Blake’s,

‘If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.’ 

Just to reiterate why this movie is still enthralling 15 years later in this stunning Blu-ray release:
Beautiful 28 year-old Christian Bale’s character, John Preston, is an elite Cleric who throughout the film begins to experience feeling, the antithesis of what it means to work for Father and the Tetragrammatron in 2072 Liberia.

Equilibrium elaborately depicts the ongoing discovery of Preston's encompassing emotions including memorable moments like when he is brought to tears from the blaring horns of Beethoven's 9th Symphony to experiencing a strange sensation by the rough touch of a railing. Preston even holds dearly a ribbon spritzed with the sweet scent of a woman in peril, a full-on-sensing damsel in distress, Mary, played brilliantly by Emily Watson.

The presence of Mary changes the entire trajectory of the film. For after all, the mother of Preston's two children was a Sense Offender. One could say he has a sense for them. His deceased wife had so much emotion, for her feeling, she was sent to the Hall of Destruction for some combustion. And what did the widowed Preston feel about it? Nothing at all, sir. That is, when he was under the influence of the anesthetizing substance that keeps this military state apparatus in order. Without the green-goo of no-feel, he was flowing with feelings. How was it that Preston, a masterful sense-offender detector could not ascertain that his own wife experienced the full spectrum of emotion? He doesn’t know but he won’t let it happen again, sir. Don't slip up again Preston, Father wouldn't have that now would he...

Preston has met someone new on the job of hunting rebels like mice, a dashing outcast of his society, a woman that he confronts to uncover that she cherishes both love and emotion. Instinctively, John wants to keep Mary alive. Through Mary, he too begins to honor the lives of others and the interests of the Resistance so much, he even begins to read Milton and admires nostalgic artifacts.

Is it his emotional awareness that makes Preston such a sensational gun-slinger, so astute at detecting human emotion, as well as adroit spatial awareness? Why does he have such a radar for human connection? In one scene, confronted with protocol that requires him to kill a group of pet dogs, he is forced to kill off at least 10 soldiers in heavy armor in order to protect the last living, adorable little puppy dog. This event cements his future as a rebel left to his own devices.

                           ‘The intuitive arts cleric, it’s my job to know what you are thinking.’ - Brandt

If you are the best at something there is always someone who wants to take your crown. From the opening scene of the film, it is evident that Preston is a superior sense-hunter. Therefore, enter Brandt. Played curiously, commanding and accommodating by Taye Diggs, Brandt's embellishment of the Tetragrammaton ideals brings us back down from 2072 to the era the film was released in and must have been important for viewers back in 2002 who needed to be grounded. Brandt is often looming in the shadows yet meticulously following elaborate orders, reminding audiences that this isn't just a  plot set in the future, this is very real in the now, this is the cold-blooded way people can be today, and will and have continued to be leading up to when this article was written in 2017. But did anything change?

Brandt is the vocal and physical embodiment of the Tetragrammaton ethos as fostered by Father and DuPont, and as a Cleric he is employed to do whatever it takes to destroy the resistance and maintain  functioning totalitarianism throughout Libria. He observes and even interacts with Preston in ways that almost appear empathetic and there are even moments that leave the audience questioning if Brandt is a Sense Offender himself. But alas, in Libria, tears are not allowed! No feelings of sorrow or remorse! Brandt is the worst of the worst.

Perhaps this is why the film finds repose when Preston is most relaxed and at one with himself and his new sense of emotion. This happens when he discovers and enters relics of the past, private spaces that are hidden from the dictatorship and have some elements of artistry, balance and calm. There is something magnificent about the joy that jellyfishes Preston’s face when he takes off his gloves after entering one such shrines. His character is gifted with a particular ability for sensing underground lairs of the resistance. Later, he finds himself in ‘The Underground’ itself, where he is tested for human emotion and is subjected to what a society appears like if the good roamed free and the military state was toppled. Near the end of the film and leading up to his apparent demise as an Elite Cleric, Preston drops to the ground crying after seeing Mary burned alive, the same way his wife was killed. John Preston is Sense Crime itself.

                 "I’m a sense-offender, I don’t hang around very much with The Cleric." - Mary

The film runs parallel with a certain regime and agenda that s in full-on build mode all over America and in turn, most of the globe not in 2072 but right now in 2017. We are living in what is now called a post-truth world in which the truth is hidden and lies are implanted by conservative fire-starters who play tricks in attempt to portray students, entertainers, leftists, progressives and other such types, the outcasts of society, the problem itself. In reality, those who are actually working toward positive realignment and cohesiveness are condemned as the scapegoat to what is preventing unity, joy, peace and prosperous well-being. All this damage and uproar over problems formed, caused and created by those in power are so well covered up through diversions in popular media that the police state under the guise of capitalism is functioning in a much more effective way than is portrayed in Equilibrium. This is the kind of mental violence that is funded both open and surreptitiously by the mechanisms that be and will go on for eons. But if you are reading this, you know all that....

 

Because now with the internet, such revelations are more evident than ever. Science fiction legend, Philip K. Dick, whose writings paved the way for science fiction films like Equilibrium, claims to have been hit with a flashing orb of pink light which provided millions of words of information he wold transcribe in the 8 short years between receiving this, a living information source he considered a gift that stayed with him until his untimely death at the age of 53. Do we need such information in our lives? How does it benefit us? The world now is living information. Hold on to feeling, too.

In the lineage of the great Orwell, Huxley and Kafka styled dystopias set in harsh and staid bureaucratic environments, Equilibrium ultimately depicts how living in a military state apparatus has vast reprimands on the human condition. With the recent boost in sales of 1984 and other such novels, revisiting Equilibrium is prescient and if nothing else, will remind you how cute puppies can be.