Equilibrium (2002)
Why are you alive?
THE SUMMARY: To end all war and suffering, the government develops a drug to suppress human emotion and enforces its dosage at iron-fisted gunpoint, until one cop rediscovers his soul and kicks off the revolution. It’s a smart warning about the dangers of a safety-obsessed society, told through a plot that keeps the viewer guessing through the end.
FROM MOVIE-PICKER ALEX M: A fun action movie with a cool story about censorship and totalitarianism. I always loved the gun-kata scenes but the story is what makes me come back to it all these years later.
JAMIE AND JEANNE’S SHOW AI ART FOR THE WEEK:
Blonde Bale is a lot weirder looking than Matt Diggs.
Blonde brings a sword to a gun fight.
Blonde gets processed.
THE BEST:
Why are you alive?: The movie’s central theme is best explained by Preston’s interrogation of Mary O’Brien, the ‘sense offender’ he arrests upon discovery of her secret room of fun things from the before times. O’Brien asks Preston the key question: ‘why are you alive?’ Without a great explanation, O’Brien responds ‘it’s circular - you exist to continue your existence. What’s the point?’
The point, as she’s explaining, is that there’s something more to life than just a beating heart, or breathing lungs, or the technical biological processes that separate you from a corpse. If you can’t explain why you are alive, and what exactly you intend to achieve with each day on this planet, then why are you here? Why do you continue?
It’s a question we all should ask ourselves regularly, but it’s a question we forgot to ask ourselves sufficiently in the recent years of Covid nonsense too. If you sacrifice everything meaningful in your life to ‘avoid or prevent death,’ which can’t really be done anyhow, haven’t you given up your life already?
The effort to ‘perfect’ humanity is always evil: Nature, and man as part of it, exists with both amazing beauty and hideous flaws. By its creation, that is the state of the world, and we must have the humility to understand that nature isn’t ours to change. It was the state of the world when we arrived, and it will be the state of the world when we leave. When we believe otherwise, that we can simply erase or correct the negative parts of human nature, we assume the role of God and start exerting God-like control over each other. The problem is, by that flawed nature, none of us have God-like perfection, so it creates injustice and suffering every single time.
When we reject human nature, human nature itself becomes a crime. Equilibrium is an excellent lesson to that effect: why is it that ‘humanity perfected’ is always a rifle pointed in your face?
Rulers don’t follow their own rules: It’s perfectly fitting that DuPont pulls the Dr. Fauci or Gavin Newsom at the end and admits he doesn’t follow his own rules - he doesn’t even take the drug he enforces on everybody else. Likewise, I wish I could see an honest list of how many of our political leaders who demanded or even tried to force the vaccine upon us actually took it themselves. I guarantee the number is shockingly low.
The point is, whether it’s a politician or a thug (there’s often no difference), beware the man who points a gun at you and issues orders. He’s not operating by reason, and if his demands aren’t reasonable, he likely doesn’t live by them himself.
Beware those who invoke the rules only as needed: The ending scene is great not just for DuPont admitting he doesn’t follow his own rules, but because he then invokes the rules to try to protect himself. After he’s defeated in combat, he pleads with Preston: ‘Wait! Wait! Look at me… I’m life. I live, I breathe, I feel. Now that you know it, can you really take it? Is it really worth the price?’ Funny how he suddenly realizes this moral truth that life has inherent value when it’s his life in jeopardy. He lived his life with no respect for the rights of others, and so fittingly, Preston takes his life with no respect for his.
Those who reject the moral order of the world aren’t owed its protection when they need it. If you reject the rules, you reject them when they’d benefit you too. I have a bad feeling that many are going to learn that lesson the hard way some time soon.
A non-obvious plot keeps you guessing: Yes, Equilibrium does follow a general ‘good guy beats bad guy’ story line, but it takes the scenic route with several twists and surprises, primarily in the battle of wits and weapons between Preston and Brandt. First, Preston sets up Brandt to look like the traitor, and you think Brandt is gone and ‘processed,’ but then Brandt returns to trap Preston, only to get his face sliced off in Preston’s victory.
Likewise, I figured Preston would play hero and successfully save Mary at the last minute. Nope. She burns.
And in a more subtle point of surprise, there’s the fact that Preston’s son Robbie has also been refusing Prozium, the emotion-suppressing drug. He’s presented as so square and orderly, I expected him to betray his dad on behalf of the state, but it turns out that was all an act to avoid appearing suspicious.
A bleak set to symbolize the disconnect from nature: Aesthetically, I actually hate the set - it’s all concrete monstrosity with hardly a single green leaf ever seen in it. But that’s the point - it symbolizes the ugliness of our complete disconnect with nature. If men try to rebuild men into something ‘better’ than God created, we get ugliness. Likewise, if we try to rebuild the landscape this way, we get the same result.
The point is not ‘don’t build things,’ or ‘don’t try to be a better person,’ of course. The point is build yourself and your surroundings in harmony with the natural world, not in rejection of it.
Why are you alive?
The disease of human emotion
‘I haven’t been following the rules, so please obey the rules.’
THE WORST:
The combat style is a little cheesy: I’m torn on the combat style. One the one had, its certainly entertaining. On the other, it often comes off as a cheesy choreographed dance routine rather than a fight. Kinda like The Matrix, but not as good (and Equilibrium is a year later). I can’t call it boring, but I think it’s overdone in its literal flashiness. God help you if you’re epileptic. I think I might be just from watching it.
The final battle with Brandt is underwhelming: I know I just praised this movie for its surprises, so maybe I should be kinder on this point, but Brandt completely failing in the final fight, and actually putting up no fight whatsoever, was not a good surprise. It was a disappointment. All that tension, all that build-up, all that trickery and strategy between these men, and for the final battle, Brandt has nothing? He deserved better. He was smarter, craftier, and more skilled than that.
Very flashy combat.
Brandt deserved better.
THE RATING: 5/5 Wickies. A fascinating story on the danger of trying to control nature rather than live in harmony with it, and the hypocrisy of those who point the gun to enforce it on you.
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NEXT WEEK: Memento (2000)
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