A scanner darkly

In a future not too far from our own, the latest designer drug keeping America's addicts in thrall is Substance D, an instantly addictive drug that induces deep paranoia in its users. "You're either on it, or you haven't tried it," states one its of adherents in Richard Linklater's visually stunning, darkly comic adaptation of Philip K. Dick's cult sci-fi novel, A Scanner Darkly. Linklater's second experiment in rotoscope animation after 2001's Waking Life, a meditation on philosophy, the new film is a perfect match of style and content.
Three guys—Bob Arctor (Keanu Reeves), James Barris (Robert Downey Jr.), and Ernie Luckman (Woody Harrelson)—share a house where they spend most of their time either doing drugs or talking about doing drugs. Dropping by often are their friends, Charles Freck (Rory Cochrane), a stoner so deep into D that hallucinations and accompanying panic attacks are an everyday fact of life, and Donna Hawthorne (Winona Ryder), the woman Bob loves, but who insists on keeping the friendship casual, putting a mysterious distance between them. That's the basic setup, except for one thing: one of them is an undercover cop, Fred, and he has just been assigned to investigate himself with cameras, keeping surveillance 24/7 inside the house.
No one knows who Fred is, not even his boss, although his boss assumes that he is one of the residents of the house. Neither Fred, his boss, nor anyone else in their unit knows what any of the others look like or who they are—at least that's the boss's story, and he's sticking to it. They all wear "scramble suits" while on duty, a special head-to-toe outfit that constantly changes appearance so no one can get a fix on the person inside—or if there's even a person in there. This begins to have a curious effect on Fred, who becomes increasingly paranoid and confused about who he is and what it is he is supposed to be doing.
The story, with its constant paranoia and inferences of government and corporate conspiracy, is a compelling one, and it's well-suited to the rotoscope style, particularly in those moments when psychotic delusions come to life, or when Fred shimmers this way and that in his scramble suit. But the style is only half of it; the rest of the movie belongs to its performers, particularly Reeves and Downey, who are both excellent as men turned around by substance abuse but determined to keep up appearances.
Linklater's casting is also, if nothing else, witty. The major roles refer in some way or another to the actor to playing the part. The most obvious one is Downey, of course, with his personal history of drug use. But one also has to give Ryder credit for taking a role in which her character refers to having been accused of theft, a winking nod to her own troubles with shoplifting. Harrelson plays Ernie as a naïve, hyperactive stoner, a cross between the real-life hemp advocate and innocent Woody Boyd, the character that made him famous on Cheers. Cochrane could be a sadder, tweaked out relative of the good-time stoner he played in Linklater's great Dazed and Confused. And Reeves, well, he continues to confound expectations, following up his role in the mainstream romance The Lake House with this tumble down the rabbit's hole. Like Bob Arctor, the picture he presents of himself depends a lot on the viewpoint of whoever is looking at him.
This is a Linklater film, which means pacing is slack, to the detriment of the film as a whole. Most of his movies suffer from that, with his approach to editing and structure being lackadaisical. In this case, the film slows in some places, nearly to a halt. It's frustrating, but wait it out. The whole is worth it; it's a grand and elegant portrait of paranoia and malfeasance set amongst society's seedy underbelly.
(PAM GRADY)

eXistenZ

eXistenZ, the latest from iconoclastic director David Cronenberg (Crash, Dead Ringers, The Fly), looks at the dangers of virtual reality. The movie seems to have been designed as a cautionary tale, and, as such, contains elements of pointed satire. Unfortunately, the production as a whole has a disjointed feel, and the flaw is compounded by several ill-advised casting decisions, a meandering middle act, and an ending that cheats the audience by employing the kind of plot twist that just about anyone can see coming from a mile away. Because of the potential of the idea and Cronenberg's reputation as a film maker, it's a real disappointment to watch eXistenZ fall apart the way it does.
eXistenZ also suffers from the distinction of being the weakest of three films, all released within a month's time, to toy with the line dividing reality from fantasy. Both The Matrix and Open Your Eyes do similar things to those that Cronenberg attempts, but with far greater success. Consequently, eXistenZ comes across like a wannabe toying in an arena where the real players have already displayed their superior skills.
The movie's opening is promising. We're introduced to Allegra Geller (Jennifer Jason Leigh), the shy designer of a breakthrough virtual reality game called "eXistenZ" (pronounced like "existence" with the accents in all the wrong places). On this night, set some time in the near future, she is about to test the game with 12 randomly selected players chosen from a live audience. While their bio ports (holes in their lower backs that allow direct access to the spinal cord) are being connected to one of 12 "metaflesh game pods", Allegra describes eXistenZ as being a "whole new game system" that expands the concept of virtual reality. No sooner has she started the demonstration game, however, than shots ring out. A member of the audience, shouting gibberish and waving a bizarre gun, attempts to assassinate Allegra.
She is whisked out of harm's way by Ted Pikul (Jude Law), a marketing trainee for Antenna Research, the company that Allegra works for. Soon, the pair are on the run from persons unknown. To complicate matters, eXistenZ was damaged during the assassination attempt, and Allegra needs help entering the system and making sure that it's intact. When she decides that she can trust Ted, she enlists his aid, but there's a problem: he doesn't possess a bio port, so they have to find someone who can install one illegally. Their quest leads them to a strange corner gas station run by an oddball (Willem Dafoe) then to the hide-out of a scientist living in the woods (Ian Holm).
It's after the movie shifts to the world within eXistenZ that things start to crumble. Put simply, it's not a very compelling fake reality. There are lots of weird, squishy "mutated amphibians" running around, and much of the so-called action takes place in an old trout farm or at a Chinese restaurant. There are conspiracies and double-crosses, and the requisite confusion about what's authentic and what isn't. (When Allegra and Ted exit the game at one point, have they really departed, or is the game just making them - and us - think they've left?) By the time the film limps to the ending, we're expecting at least one of the climactic twists, and its obviousness leaves a bad taste. It probably would have been more interesting for Cronenberg not to employ such an transparent "surprise."
Casting is another problem. In presenting Allegra as an introvert who would rather immerse herself in eXistenZ than face the real world, the versatile Jennifer Jason Leigh is virtually the only actor to create a credible character. Jude Law (the "donor" in Gattaca), as Allegra's game-playing partner and potential lover, is bland - hardly the type of personality we want for a hero. Law may be a better actor than Keanu Reeves (who fulfilled a similar function in The Matrix), but, when it comes to screen presence, he's inferior. The gifted Ian Holm is saddled with a ridiculous Eastern European accent (it's so outlandish that the script jokes about it) and a miniscule role. Also criminally underused are Willem Dafoe and Sarah Polley (who can currently be seen in Go). There's a lot of sexual imagery in the film, especially in the way that Cronenberg equates game playing with the sex act (the symbolism - of a plug being inserted into the bio port - is more than a little heavy-handed), and the superlative set design is an undeniable asset. However, while not exactly wasted, this production element could have been used in the service of a better-realized script. eXistenZ's overall message - presumably a warning about the addictive nature of games that draw players away from reality - isn't exactly new. In fact, the same ideas were presented in a more compelling and controversial fashion several years ago in the James Cameron/Katherine Bigelow collaboration, Strange Days. Cronenberg, who is known for pushing the envelope, shows surprising restraint here, which may be a mistake, since he fails to accomplish anything noteworthy with a premise that, at first glance, seems foolproof. While eXistenZ contains a few enjoyable sequences (most of which occur during the first 30 minutes - I liked the development of Allegra's character and the introduction of the "Corner Gas Station"), the overall impression is of a missed opportunity. Fans of the director will probably be divided about eXistenZ's merits and impact, but most everyone else will find this to be a meandering and pointless exercise in duping an audience.

Review by J. Berardinelli

Fahrenheit 451

A classic of 20th-century dystopian fiction (e.g.,"The Handmaid's Tale," "A Clockwork Orange," "1984," "Brave New World," "We"), Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451" has been adapted for film only once, by French filmmaker François Truffaut ("Jules and Jim," "Shoot the Piano Player," "The 400 Blows") almost forty years ago. Critics and audiences reacted with either indifference or outright hostility to Truffaut's first (and last) English-language film. Unfortunately, "Fahrenheit 451" suffers from languid pacing, a loosely structured script, and low-key performances (all of which make "Fahrenheit 451" a difficult watch for most viewers). On the plus side, "Fahrenheit 451" constains striking production design, arresting imagery, and a lush, effusive score by Bernard Hermann ("North by Northwest," "Vertigo," "The Man Who Knew Too Much").
Like Bradbury’s novel, Truffaut’s adaptation of Fahrenheit 451 is set in a recognizable near-future, but one in which all books have been banned, due to the dangerous ideas they contain and the independent thought they foster. To that end, books are banned and lawbreakers are threatened with imprisonment (or worse). Law enforcement takes the form of fire brigades. In Bradbury's dystopia, firemen are tasked with book burning (fireproof buildings have otherwise made “firemen” obsolete). Mass entertainment brought into living rooms by interactive television sets and over-the-counter drugs are used to keep the population pacified and social interactions to a minimum.Guy Montag (Oskar Werner), a fireman seems unmoved by the prospect by the prospect of a promotion offered by his superior (Cyril Cusack). His wife, Linda (Julie Christie), obsessed with the television programs she watches incessantly, can't wait to purchase a second wall-mounted television set with Montag's promotion bonus. Linda also uses drugs to control her moods. On his way into work one day, Montag meets Clarisse (Julie Christie again) on the monorail that takes him to and from work every day. Clarisse, it seems, sees through Montag's facade and pushes him to confront hard questions about his identity and his role in an oppressive, repressive society.Over the course of Fahrenheit 451, Montag's behavior radically shifts, in no small part due to his repeated encounters with Clarisse and the seduction posed by the books he comes across. He rebels, taking one book, Charles Dickens' David Copperfield home one day, voraciously reading it in one sitting. One infraction leads to another, with Montag struggling with his inner doubts about the career he's chosen for himself, his status-conscious wife's disapproval, and his superior's increasing suspicions about his erratic behavior. Montag is ultimately tempted into open rebellion by his encounter with an old woman and a secret library.Montag's personal and external journey ultimately takes him into contact with the "Book People," individuals who save books by memorizing them completely. Whether Montag finds sanctuary or is captured by the powers-that-be or their representatives is better for patient viewers to discover for themselves. Suffice it to say that a nationally televised manhunt foreshadows Stephen King's The Running Man, as well as the less lethal reality shows that have flooded the airwaves over the last five years, plays a significant role in Montag's future (i.e., whether, in fact, he has one).It's in the final twenty minutes, after the passive Montag is finally stirred from inaction, that Fahrenheit 451 becomes compelling viewing. Whether it's the not-so-subtle digs at network television (or the need for closure, even if manufactured, and therefore untrue), or finally, the vision of the sanctuary of the Book People reciting books to themselves and one another as snow falls near a lake, Truffaut gives his lyricism free reign. Certainly, the preceding scenes are meant to evoke a cold, antiseptic, humorless world (aided by the modernist production design and Truffaut’s decision to use a desaturated color palette), but they also tend toward the episodic, the superfluous or the repetitive. Given Fahrenheit 451's fairly straightforward anti- censorship theme, it could have benefited from more external conflict instead of the interior conflict it relies on. Truffaut also gives the romantic subplot involving Montag and Clarisse little screen time. It's one aspect of the script that could have benefited from expanded or one or two more scenes (or simply better tighter, more cohesive scenes).
"Fahrenheit 451" suffers from the same problems a younger Truffaut once criticized in the pages of "Cahiers du Cinema," an approach to literary adaptations that places fidelity to the source material first and foremost, with the unique demands of cinema a distant second. Perhaps Truffaut treated "Fahrenheit 451" too seriously, as a great work of art with a profound theme. Truffaut would have been better served by taking the more free-form, associative approach that made "Shoot the Piano Player," an adaptation of a melancholic crime novel by pulp writer David Goodis, far superior to "Fahrenheit 451." Unless the much-delayed remake actually gets greenlit by a Hollywood studio, for now Truffaut’s film will remain the definitive version of Bradbury's novel, if only by default.

Gattaca

Welcome to the 21st Century, an era when things aren't that much different, but people are. No longer is standard procreation the accepted way to reproduce. Consider all of the birth defects that such an approach can bring about. And, while it would be unreasonable to outlaw sex for the purpose of producing offspring, be aware than any children so conceived are almost certain to be "in-valids" -- genetically imperfect and ill-suited to be productive members of society. There is a better, more rational way -- a method that will guarantee health, stamina, and physical attractiveness. Let science do a little tinkering with the DNA. Everyone does it. Or at least everyone who wants their child to have a shot at a normal, well-adjusted life.
This is the chillingly feasible premise of Gattaca. While in 1997, science has not yet perfected the genetic engineering techniques used in this film to routinely develop babies, every day brings the medical profession closer. As a result, Gattaca doesn't just function as a science fiction thriller, but as both a cautionary tale about the dangers of letting scientific ability outstrip ethics and as a morality play about the irrationality of bigotry.
Andrew Niccol's oppressive future, which contains more than an element of Orwell's "Big Brother is watching" mentality, isn't just a clever backdrop against which to set a thriller. Instead, it's an integral part of the story. While it's true that there is a murder mystery, that's just a subplot. The main focus of Gattaca is the struggle of a genetically inferior man, Vincent Freeman (Ethan Hawke), to survive and prosper in a world where his kind is routinely discriminated against.
Shortly after they were married, Vincent's parents decided to start a family the old-fashioned way, without any help from doctors and test tubes. The result was a boy who was diagnosed as 99% likely to have a serious heart defect. That rendered Vincent ineligible for all but the most menial of jobs. But his dream was to one day work at The Gattaca Aerospace Corporation and participate in the first-ever manned flight to the moons of Saturn. For most "in-valids", this would have remained a fantasy, but Vincent possessed the determination and drive to make it real.
With the help of a shady middle-man, Vincent locates Jerome Morrow (Jude Law), a genetically superior individual who was paralyzed as the result of an accident. He agees to sell Vincent his identity (including blood and urine on demand, fingerprints, hair and other body debris, etc.). So, equipped with Jerome's genetic resume, which guarantees him work anywhere, Vincent applies for a position at Gattaca. He is accepted and quickly proves his worth to everyone. But, a week before he is to attain his lifelong ambition of making a space flight, he becomes a suspect in a murder investigation and his carefully-guarded secret is in danger of being exposed.
One of the things that impressed me the most about Gattaca is its ability to keep the level of tension high without compromising the script's intelligence or integrity. First-time director Andrew Niccol, a New Zealander working in Los Angeles, displays a sure hand in his execution of the material. One scene in particular, a masterfully-edited sequence cutting back and forth between the cops (who are closing in) and a man struggling to accomplish a Herculean physical task, is guaranteed to render audiences breathless. And there are enough little twists and turns to keep even the most easily-distracted audience member involved. From a visual perspective, Niccol's cinematographer, Slawomir Idziak, uses his trademark filters to differentiate the soft, warm glow of the outside world from the harshness of the windowless interior of Gattaca.
Ethan Hawke is solid as Vincent, effectively portraying both his single-minded determination to rise about the disadvantages of his birth and his constant wariness of being caught once he has reached that goal. Jude Law's Jerome is a fascinating individual -- a man who is torn between despising Vincent because of his inferiority and admiring him because he's succeeding. In fact, Jerome is arguably Gattaca's most complex character. Meanwhile, Alan Arkin gives a delightful turn as a hard-bitten detective. Uma Thurman's limited range isn't taxed as Vincent's love interest (there isn't much chemistry between her and Hawke, but, since romance is a tertiary element of the story, it doesn't make much difference). And Loren Dean (the title character in Billy Bathgate) plays a cop with a special grudge against Vincent.
The average thriller, even if it's set in a faraway or futuristic world, tends to offer visceral, ephemeral excitement, and not much else. However, while Gattaca has the energy and tautness to compare with the best of those, its thought-provoking script and thematic richness elevate it to the next level. Gattaca is not a perfect motion picture (I would have appreciated a little more political background), but, at a time when so many science fiction films are dumber than dirt, it makes for a refreshing change-of-pace, and is a fine addition to the Fall movie season.

Zardoz

John Boorman's ZARDOZ (1074) is a genuinely quirky movie, a trip into a future that seems ruled by perpetually stoned set decorators. It's set in an Ireland of 2293 that looks exactly like the Ireland of today, until you get inside the Vortex. And then suddenly everything is shimmering gowns and futuristic throne rooms and beautiful young people who glide around at an endless debutante ball.These are the Immortals. They will never die. They cannot. Every time they try to, their bodies are relentlessly restored by the all-knowing mystical computer mind that runs the Vortex. There's a catch, though: They can't die but they can grow old, and for infractions, they're sentenced to age a few years. If they don't watch themselves, they might wind up as Immortal Seniles.Outside the Vortex, a barbaric civilization survives. Slaves till the land and gather the crops, ruled over by sadistic masters who sometimes gallop around killing off the surplus population. One of the barbarians is Zed, played by Sean Connery as a cross between Tarzan and Prince Valiant. But one day, Zed (like Lord Greystoke, come to think of it) finds a child's alphabet book. He teaches himself to read and then fanatically devours the contents of whole libraries (like Thomas Wolfe, come to think of it). Eventually he comes upon The Wizard of Oz and, in a moment of blinding insight, sees through the whole joke of his world's social structure.Zed has himself smuggled aboard the giant floating head of Zardoz, which rules hinterlands, and finds himself inside the Vortex. Here he is an object of great interest, because the Immortals, you see, having lost the ability to die have also lost the drive to procreate and are doomed to an eternity of detumescence. Zed labors with no such difficulty.The movie is an exercise in self-indulgence (if often an interesting one) by Boorman, who more or less had carte blanche to do a personal project after his immensely successful DELIVERANCE. Boorman seems fascinated by stories which are disconnected from the ordinary realist assumptions of most movies; his LEO THE LAST (1970) gave us Marcello Mastroianni as the last of the big-time decadents, living in a mansion at the end of a deserted street in an eerie London.Boorman puts a lot of heavy concepts into ZARDOZ, but seems uncertain whether he takes them seriously himself. There are sight gags (the attempt to turn on Connery with futuristic pornography provides the best) , there are group seances that seem lifted bodily from pajama parties, there is no end of special visual effects (every optical printer in England must have been busy for weeks), and at the end there's a combination shoot-out and mercy-killing spree that is at once ridiculous, depraved and low camp.Sean Connery wanders through all of this with a slightly bemused expression on his face. He begins as a barbarian given to distrust and childish impulses, but after he gathers all knowledge to himself (the movie is full of phrases like "gathers all knowledge to himself"), he turns into a sort of body-building Einstein who sees into the center of the Vortex, deciphers the wisdom of the crystal, stimulates the Apathetics (that's another social class I forgot to mention), makes love with a good-looking Immortal dame (she regains the knack) and finally turns into a fossil while the sound track milks Beethoven's 7th for all it's worth.I remember standing in the rain once outside a theater that was playing LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD. Now there was a movie so complex and personal no one claimed to be able to understand itÑno, not even Time magazine. The people coming out from the previous show were shaking their heads and admitting that they, too, didn't have a clue. And then it was our turn to go in and be mystified.Every once in a while, a movie like that comes along; a movie you've got to see so that you, too, can be in the dark about it. In the movie's own terms, this much can be said for sure: It may not make you an Apathetic, but it will certainly age you by two hours.
Reviewed by Roger Ebert

Metropolis

Lang, Fritz (1890-1976), was an Austrian-American film director. He made more than 30 films in Germany and the United States, his first successful one being Der müde Tod (Weary Death, 1921), issued in the U.S. as Between Worlds. Lang's masterpieces include Metropolis (1927), (Kaplan 232) in which a magnificent futuristic city is maintained by workers enslaved underground; M (1931), his first sound film, a psychological thriller about a compulsive murderer; and two studies of the criminal mind, Dr. Mabuse (1922) and The Last Will of Dr. Mabuse (1933). (Kaplan 432) The latter won the approbation of Nazi officials who sought Lang's collaboration. Lang, who was half Jewish, fled Germany immediately; he became an American citizen in 1935. Among his films made in the U.S. were Fury (1936), about a lynch mob; You Only Live Once (1937); Rancho Notorious (1952); and Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956).

Lang's early architectural and art training is evident in his visual approach; he developed narrative and created an atmosphere through expressionistic, symbolic sets and lighting, as well as through his editing. Just as conventional lines and shapes are distorted in traditional German expressionism, Lang’s futuristic cityscapes are distorted.Even though Fritz was from Austria, his works are studied as German cinema. The striking and innovative German silent cinema drew much from expressionist art and classical theater techniques of the period .

The most celebrated example of expressionist filmmaking of the time is The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919) by Robert Wiene, in which highly stylized costumes and settings were used to tell the story from a madman's point of view. A similar concern with the supernatural is evident in such films as The Golem (1920), by Paul Wegener, the vampire film Nosferatu (1922), by F. W. Murnau, and Fritz Lang's science fiction spectacle Metropolis (1926), which deals with a robot-like society controlled by an evil superindustrialist.

By the mid-1920s, the technical proficiency of the German film surpassed any other in the world. Artists and directors were given almost limitless support from the state, which financed the largest and best-equipped studios in the world, the huge Universum-Film-Aktiengesellschaft—popularly known as UFA—near Berlin.

Introspective, expressionist studies of lower-class life known as “street” films were marked by dignity, beauty, and length, displaying great strides in the effective use of lighting, sets, and photography. German directors freed the camera from the tripod and put it on wheels, achieving a mobility and grace never seen before. Films such as Murnau's The Last Laugh (1924), starring Emil Jannings, and The Joyless Street (1925), by G. W. Pabst, starring the Swedish-American actor Greta Garbo, were internationally acclaimed for their depth of feeling and technical innovation.

Because of the immigration of the best German film talent to America, including the directors Murnau and Lang and the actor Jannings, German films declined quickly after 1925, becoming imitations of Hollywood productions.Since Lang is a self-proclaimed, “visual person” German expressionism was the perfect style for him to work from for his epic science fiction film, Metropolis.

This 1926 silent, tinted film relies on innovative visual imagery that was well ahead of its time. Metropolis was produced by UFA (Universum-Film-Aktiengesellschaft), directed by Fritz Lang, and his wife Thea Von Harbou. Cinematography was by Karl Fruend and Guenther Rittau. The Production Design was by Otto Hunte, Erich Kettelhut, and Karl Vollbrecht. The fantastically creative costume design was the work of Aenne Willkomm. Metropolis was produced by Erich Pommer.

The story takes place in 2026, one-hundred years from when the movie was made. The world Von Harbou and Lang created was a cold, mechanical, industrial one. Since this movie was produced not long after the industrial revolution, it could be a foreshadowing of what the world would have been like if the industrial revolution had kept growing. The city of Metropolis is a crowded one where people are either of the privileged elite, or of the repressed, impoverished masses. Vast numbers of the lower class live underground to run the machines that keep the above ground Metropolis in working order.

The workers run the machines, but the machines run the lives of the workers. The monotonous droves of workers are truly a, “mass of men leading lives of quiet desperation,” to quote Thoreau. Lang portrays this with a montage of cattle-like herds of people, grinding machinery, and clocks.In contrast, the other portion of this futuristic world plays and delights in the gardens and stadiums. The scene that illustrates this shows an orange stadium with blue sky drifting by as the privileged class enjoys Olympic-style races. This is when we meet one of the main characters, Freder Fredersen, played by Gustav Froehlich. Later we see Freder frolicking with a girl in the Eden-like Eternal Gardens of Pleasure. As Freder flirts with the girl at the fountain, he sees Maria emerge. Maria, who is played by Brigitte Helm, is dismissed as the daughter of “some worker” by others, but Freder is quite taken by her. Freder pursues her into the foreign Underground City.

In the Underground City, Freder sees an old worker struggling with the dials on a piece of clock-like machinery. The worker fails to keep up with the demands of the machine, and thus the machine blows up. Freder begins to hallucinate that the masses of workers are being shoved into the mouth of the monstrous machine. The imagery of Metropolis’ unquenchable hunger for more human lives is symbolically clear. Lang’s visual talents are apparent.

Freder, who is astonished by the horror of the Underground City, rushes to talk to his father. On his way there, the viewer gets a tour through Metropolis. Lang visually shows how cold, crowded, busy and yet beautiful Metropolis is. Futuristic paintings and models of the city show the unique architecture as well. The freedom science fiction lends to a visual director is limited only by the director’s imagination. Suspended streets, and zig-zagged building, only begin to exemplify the bustling city. It is obvious how influential Metropolis has been on later science fiction films when one looks at a movie like Blade Runner. The cityscapes created for Blade Runner look like an updated version of Metropolis.

When Freder reaches his destination, we see that his father is Joh Fredersen, the Master of Metropolis. Note how he is called the master, and not the leader of Metropolis. This says a great deal about the character even before we know much more about him. He rules and dominates the city, not directs it. Joh, who is played by Alfred Abel, is a frightening combination of Shakespeare’s Richard the III and Hitler. The Hitler allusion is particularly alarming considering the concentration camp-like imagery used in the Underground City scenes, and the fact that this film was produced in pre-Hitler and pre-World War II Germany. Joh’s character also has the biblical parallel of the Egyptian pharaoh enslaving the Jews to build pyramids. In fact, when Freder arrives, he asks his father,” Why do you treat the workers so badly?” Joh replies that it was, “their hands that built Metropolis!”

Later on, Freder once again ventures down into the Underground City. Freder visualizes the worker struggling with the dials, and the image of a clock bleeds through in a dissolve. Hard work, machine-like efficiency, and time are expressed in this effective sequence of images. Freder remembers what happened to the last poor, struggling worker and goes to help this one. Freder volunteers to “trade clothes and identities” and work the machine for the man. Freder tells Georgy the worker to give a message to his friend Josephat. Georgy goes to deliver the message, but is side tracked by the red-light district of Metropolis, to a place called Yoshiwara. Josaphat does not receive his message.

The next scene introduces the viewer to an old, rickety house owned by Rotwang, an inventor and scientist. He is consumed by the memory of an old flame named Hel. It turns out that there was a bit of a love triangle between Rotwang, Hel, and Joh. Joh ended up marrying Hel, and she died while giving birth to Freder.

Joh wanted some secret worker plans deciphered by Rotwang, but Rotwang had something more significant to show Joh. Rotwang presents Joh with his new invention, a strikingly beautiful robot that is suppose to be Hel. Rotwang exclaimed, “All it is missing is a soul!”

Meanwhile, Freder comes across a copy of the worker’s plans, and a co-worker comes over to confide in him that, “Maria is having another meeting.” In anticipation of seeing Maria again, Freder works away at the dial. Visual images of the dials on the machine and the clock merge back and forth. Fritz makes it clear that the work is painstaking, the shifts are long, and time does not seem to go fast enough when waiting for the shift to be over with.

Finally, the shift does end and the workers file down into the deep catacombs to see Maria speak. The biblical theme reoccurs again. Maria is named after the Virgin Mary, she is speaking at an alter with crosses on it, and the workers are in the catacombs with her. The catacombs are where the ancient Christians used to hide out and worship when seeking refuge from prosecution for their beliefs. Freder collapses to his knees as if worshipping Maria. Such visual analogies seem to be the simplest way for Fritz Lang to explain concepts without words.

Maria tells the workers the story of the Tower of Babel. The parallel is made between the slaves who built Babel, and the workers who built and maintain Metropolis. A image of thousands of chained, bald, slaves is presented. They are treated like livestock as they are herded off to work. The disturbing concentration camp images are alarmingly prophetic.

In Maria’s oration, she talks about how the conceivers of Babel did not care about the slaves. The conceivers of Metropolis do not care about the workers. Both places need a mediator between those who rule, and those who are ruled.

Meanwhile, Joh and Rotwang witness Maria’s sermon because the deciphered plans led them to her. Joh tells Rotwang to make the robot look like Maria. Joh believed that if he had a duplicate of Maria that he would have control over and could manipulate the workers. He would have a very powerful tool.

After the sermon, Freder and Maria kiss for the first time. Maria tells him to meet her in the cathedral tomorrow. Freder leaves, and Maria is alone in the catacomb. Rotwang comes out of his hiding place and pursues Maria. He chases her with a flashlight, corners her, and captures her. Freder never met Maria at the cathedral. Freder finds out where Maria is when she shouts through a grate in the street while trying to escape Rotwang. Freder tries to save her, but she is swiftly taken away to the laboratory.

Maria is hooked up to a myriad of machines and contraptions, and so is the female robot. This scene is a visual cacophony of special effects. It a showcase of creativity for Fritz Lang. Glowing rings and lightning effects flash as the robots face dissolves into Maria’s face. This is a creation scene right out of Frankenstein. The new robot Maria is an evil, lusty character unlike the pure, angelic real Maria. Brigitte Helm makes this apparent by portraying the robot with one eye more open than the other to give her a devilish look.

Rotwang brings robot Maria to a party at Yoshiwara’s to show Joh how real she is to everyone else. The robot gets up on stage and does a tempting, nude, Salome style dance. At which point, Lang cuts to a montage of lecherous male eyes.

The feverishly sick Freder senses this dance in a hallucination and is distraught. He then hallucinates about the Seven Deadly Sins statues he saw in the cathedral. In the vision he sees the Grim Reaper swing his scythe. Once out of his fever induced haze, Freder finds out where Maria is and sees her out. He goes to Yoshiwara’s and finds the robot Maria.

Eventually, the robot Maria gives a diluted sermon to the workers. It ill advises her followers to take up violence, not peace. Freder realizes that this is not the real Maria. Maria leads the masses to the machines in the Underground City and orders them to be destroyed. The workers did not know that destroying the machines would flood the area and drown their children. The machines are bound by the people, and the people are bound by the machines.

In the meantime, the real Maria escaped Rotwang and witnessed the failure of all the machines. The water ruptured through and flooded the Underground City. Maria worked with the machinery to try and stop the flooding, and gathered the children in an attempt to keep them safe. Eventually Freder finds Maria, and together they stop the flooding.

At one point Joh watched the city of Metropolis from his high-rise office. All one sees is Joh sitting at his seat, looking at something out of the shot. The wall behind him shows the reflection of lights blinking. The light is coming from the city which we cannot. When the office goes still and dark, it is implied that Metropolis is “broken.” This is a very effective visual effect of Fritz Lang’s. There is no need to see the city, we know it is there.

In the Underground City, the workers think that Maria has tried to drown their children. They workers go on a witch hunt after Maria. The workers think she is at Yoshiwara’s, and there they find the robot Maria celebrating the fiasco she has created. They capture the robot who is laughing wickedly, and they tie her up to burn her at the stake. In the confusion, Freder thinks the real Maria is being burned. The workers eventually see the robot beneath the burned away flesh. Freder realized that he must find the real Maria again, and he finds her trying to escape Rotwang who is chasing her. Rotwang and Freder fight on the roof top of the cathedral. Rotwang ends up falling to his death.

The masses march into the church, and they realize that Freder is the mediator they where seeking. They found the midway point between Joh and the workers; the ruler and the ruled.

Since the initial spark of Melies Trip to the Moon, science fiction has been welcomed by cinema. Yet Trip to the Moon was just 1800’s spectacle stage, it was not a full-fledged science fiction masterpiece like Metropolis. The pioneering effort that Lang took on has and will affect science fiction film for generations.
Text written by Erika Hawkins

G. Orwell - 1984

George Orwell made no secret of the fact that his great novel 1984 was not really about the future but about the very time he wrote it in, the bleak years after World War II when England shivered in poverty and hunger. In a novel where passion is depicted as a crime, the greatest passion is expressed, not for sex, but for contraband strawberry jam, coffee and chocolate.

What Orwell feared, when he wrote his novel in 1948, was that Hitlerism, Stalinism, centralism and conformity would catch hold and turn the world into a totalitarian prison camp. It is hard, looking around (he globe, to say that he was altogether wrong.Michael Radford’s brilliant film of Orwell’s vision does a good job of finding that line between the “future” world of 1984 and the grim postwar world in which Orwell wrote.

The movie’s 1984 is like a year arrived at through a time warp, an alternative reality that looks constructed out of old radio tubes and smashed office furniture. There is not a single prop in this movie that you couldn’t buy in a junkyard, and yet the visual result is uncanny: Orwell’s hero, Winston Smith, lives in a world of grim and crushing inhumanity, of bombed factories, bug-infested bedrooms and citizens desperate for the most simple pleasures.

The film opens with Smith rewriting history: His task is to change obsolete government documents so that they reflect current reality. He methodically scratches out old headlines, obliterates the photographs of newly made “unpersons,” and attends mass rallies at which the worship of Big Brother alternates with numbing reports of the endless world war that is still going on somewhere, involving somebody.Into Smith’s world comes a girl, Julia, who slips him a note of stunning force. The note says, “I love you.” Smith and Julia become revolutionaries by making love, walking in the countryside and eating strawberry jam.

Then Smith is summoned to the office of O’Brien, a high official of the “inner party,” who seems to be a revolutionary too, and who gives him the banned writings, of an enemy of the state.This story is, of course, well known. 1984 must be one of the most widely read novels of our time.

What is remarkable about the movie is how completely it satisfied my feelings about the book; the movie looks, feels, and almost tastes and smells like Orwell’s bleak and angry vision.John Hurt with his scrawny body and lined and weary face, makes the perfect Winston Smith; and Richard Burton, looking so old and weary in this film that it is little wonder he died soon after finishing it, is the immensely cynical O’Brien, who feels close to people only while he is torturing them.

Suzanna Hamilton is Julia, a fierce little war orphan whose rebellion is basically inspired by her hungers.Radford’s style in the movie is an interesting experiment.

Like Chaplin in “Modern Times,” he uses passages of dialogue that are not meant to be understood - nonsense words and phrases, garbled as they are transmitted over Big Brother’s primitive TV, and yet listened to no more or less urgently than the messages that say something.

The 1954-film version of Orwell’s novel turned it into a cautionary, simplistic science fiction tale. This version penetrates much more deeply into the novel’s heart of darkness.

ROGER EBERT

Brazil

Just as George Orwell’s 1984 is an alternate vision of the past, present and future, so “Brazil” is a variation of Orwell’s novel.

The movie happens in a time and place that seem vaguely like our own, but with different graphics, hardware and politics.

Society is controlled by a monolithic organization, and citizens lead a life of paranoia and control. Thought police are likely to come crashing through the ceiling and start bashing dissenters.

Life is mean and grim.The hero of “Brazil” is Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce), a meek, desperate little man who works at a computer terminal all day.

Occasionally he cheats; when the boss isn’t looking, he and his fellow workers switch the screens of their computers to reruns of exciting old TV programs.

Sam knows his life is drab and lockstep, but he sees no way out of it. His only escape is into his fantasies - into glorious dreams of flying high above all the petty cares of the world, urged on by the vision of a beautiful woman.His everyday life offers no such possibilities.

Even the basic mechanisms of life support seem to be failing, and one scene early in the movie has Robert De Niro in a walk-on as an illegal free-lance repairman who defies the state by fixing things. De Niro makes his escape by sliding down long cables to freedom, like Spider-Man.

For Sam, there seems to be no escape.But then he gets involved in an intrigue that involves the girl of his dreams, the chief executive of the state and a shadowy band of dissenters. All of this is strangely familiar; the outlines of “Brazil” are much the same as those of 1984, but the approach is different.

While Orwell’s lean prose was translated last year into an equally lean and dour film, “Brazil” seems almost like a throwback to the psychedelic 1960s, to an anarchic vision in which the best way to improve things is to blow them up.The other difference between the two worlds - Orwell’s and the one created here by director and co-writer Terry Gilliam - is that Gilliam apparently has had no financial restraints.

Although “Brazil” has had a checkered history since it was made (for a long time, Universal Pictures seemed unwilling to release it), there was a lot of money available to make it. The movie is awash in elaborate special effects, sensational sets, apocalyptic scenes of destruction and a general lack of discipline. It’s as if Gilliam sat down and wrote out all of his fantasies, heedless of production difficulties, and then they were filmed - this time, heedless of sense.

The movie is very hard to follow. I have seen it twice, and am still not sure exactly who all the characters are, or how they fit.Perhaps it is not supposed to be clear; perhaps the movie’s air of confusion is part of its paranoid vision. There are individual moments that create sharp images (shock troops drilling through a ceiling,

De Niro wrestling with the almost obscene wiring and tubing inside a wall, the movie’s obsession with bizarre duct work), but there seems to be no sure hand at the controls.

The best scene in the movie is one of the simplest, as Sam moves into half an office and finds himself engaged in a tug-of-war over his desk with the man through the wall. I was reminded of a Chaplin film, “Modern Times,” and reminded, too, that in Chaplin economy and simplicity were virtues, not the enemy.
BY ROGER EBERT

Children of men

It is above all the look of "Children of Men" that stirs apprehension in the heart. Is this what we are all headed for? The film is set in 2027, when assorted natural disasters, wars and terrorist acts have rendered most of the world ungovernable, uninhabitable or anarchic. Britain stands as an island of relative order, held in line by a fearsome police state. It has been 18 years since Earth has seen the birth of a human child.
Watching "Children of Men," which creates a London in ruins, I realized after a point that the sets and art design were so well done that I took it as a real place. Often I fear it will all come to this, that the rule of law and the rights of men will be destroyed by sectarian mischief and nationalistic recklessness. Are we living in the last good times?
There is much to be said about the story of "Children of Men," directed by Alfonso Cuaron and based on a lesser-known novel by P.D. James, who usually writes about a detective. But the story, like the stories of "Metropolis," "Nosferatu" or "Escape from New York," is secondary to the visual world we are given to regard. Guerrilla fighters occupy abandoned warehouses. The homeless live in hovels. Immigrants are rounded up and penned in cages. The utilities cannot be depended upon. There are, most disturbing of all, no children. Only dogs and cats remain to be cared for and cherished.
As the film opens, the TV news reports that the world's youngest person has been stabbed to death in Buenos Aires, because he declined to give an autograph. Theo Faron (Clive Owen), the film's hero, watches the news in a cafe and then leaves with his paper cup in his hand. Seconds later, a bomb destroys the cafe. This is essential: Faron is terrified. He crouches and fear freezes his face. This will not be like action pictures where the hero never seems to fear death.
Britain, as the last functioning nation, has closed its borders, and is engaged in a war between the establishment and a band of rebels who support immigrant rights. Faron is kidnapped by this group, headed by Julian Taylor (Julianne Moore), who was once his lover; they lost a child.
Her associate, Luke (Chiwetel Ejiofor, in another unexpected character), backs her up with muscle and wisdom. Interestingly, there seems to be no racial prejudice in this Britain; they don't care what color you are, as long as you were on board before they pulled up the rope. Julian's group wants Faron's influence to get travel papers for Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey), so the young woman can be smuggled out of the country and to refuge in a rumored safe haven. Kee is a key to the future; the movie's advertising tells you why, but I will not.
The center of the film involves the journey toward the coast, which Faron and Kee undertake with Julian, Luke and Miriam (Pam Ferris), who is both watchdog and nurse. Along the way, they are pursued by Homeland Security troops, and there is a chase scene with one of the most sudden and violent moments I have ever seen in a film. Not all of the chases in all of the Bournes equal this one, shot in a single take by one camera, for impact.
Here again, the action scenes seem rooted in sweat and desperation. Too many action scenes look like slick choreography, but Cuaron and Owen get the scent of fear and death, and nobody does anything that is particularly impossible. Small details: Even in the midst of a firefight, dogs scamper in the streets. Faron's hand reaches out to touch and reassure the nearest animal, and I was reminded of Jack London's belief that dogs (not cats so much) see us as their gods. Apparently sterility affects only humans on Earth; when we are gone, will the dogs still tirelessly search for us?
I have been using Hitchcock's term "MacGuffin" too much lately, but there are times when only it will do. The lack of children and the possibility of children are the MacGuffins in "Children of Men," inspiring all the action, but the movie significantly never tells us why children stopped being born, or how they might become possible again. The children-as-MacGuffin is simply a dramatic device to avoid actual politics while showing how the world is slipping away from civility and co-existence. The film is not really about children; it is about men and women, and civilization, and the way that fear can be used to justify a police state.
I admire that plot decision. I would have felt let down if the movie had a more decisive outcome; it is about the struggle, not the victor, and the climax in my opinion is open-ended. The performances are crucial, because all of these characters have so completely internalized their world that they make it palpable, and themselves utterly convincing.
Cuaron fulfills the promise of futuristic fiction; characters do not wear strange costumes or visit the moon, and the cities are not plastic hallucinations, but look just like today, except tired and shabby. Here is certainly a world ending not with a bang but a whimper, and the film serves as a cautionary warning. The only thing we will have to fear in the future, we learn, is the past itself. Our past. Ourselves.
By Roger Ebert

Equilibrium

Equilibrium is set in the future, in the dystopian city-state of Libria. The film explains how, in the early years of the 21st century, a devastating Third World War breaks out, the impact of which brings civilizations across the planet to their knees. After the war ends, world leaders fear that the human race cannot possibly survive a Fourth World War, and so set about building a new society which is free of conflict.
Believing that human emotion is responsible for man's inhumanity to man, the new leaders ban all materials deemed likely to stimulate strong emotions, including art, music, and literature. These materials are rated "EC-10" for "emotional content" (a reference to the MPAA film rating system), and are typically destroyed by immediate incineration. Furthermore, all citizens of Libria are required to take regular injections, called "intervals," of a liquid drug called Prozium, collected at the distribution centers known as "Equilibrium".
Plot
Libria is governed by the Tetragrammaton Council, which is led by a reclusive figurehead known as "Father". Father never interacts with anyone outside the ruling council, but his image is omnipresent throughout the city in a strong cult of personality. The Tetragrammaton Council strives to create identical lives for all Librians and uses its police state apparatus to enforce unity and conformity. At the pinnacle of Librian law enforcement are the Grammaton Clerics, who are trained in the deadly martial art of Gun Kata, an art which teaches users to predict the actions of opponents during firearm combat. The Clerics exist for the purpose of locating and destroying EC-10 materials and for pursuing, apprehending, and, if necessary, terminating "sense-offenders"—people guilty of feeling emotions.
Despite the efforts of the police and Clerics, a resistance movement exists in Libria, known as "The Underground". Members of this movement are responsible for terrorist activity against Libria, specifically against the Prozium factories. The leaders of the Underground believe that if they can disrupt the production and distribution of Prozium for a short period of time—even a single day—then the Librians will rise up and destroy the Tetragrammaton Council. The Underground operates within Libria itself, but also has contact with resistance groups residing in "The Nethers", the ruins of cities destroyed during World War III. These outsiders hoard objects and artifacts from the old society before World War III, including art and literature. Subsequently, they are the targets of Librian death squads composed of police and Clerics.
The city of Libria, 2072.
The film's protagonist, Grammaton Cleric First Class John Preston, is Libria's highest ranking cleric, and his success stems from his intuitive ability to identify sense-offenders. He is a widower whose wife was executed after being revealed to be a sense offender, leaving him with two children. After a raid on a group of resistance members in The Nethers, Preston notices that his partner, Grammaton Cleric First Class Errol Partridge, has personally taken a copy of the poems of Yeats under false pretenses. Preston discovers that Partridge has not turned the book over for destruction and follows him to a ruined cathedral in The Nethers, where Partridge talks of the loss of everything that makes them human, most notably the right to experience emotions. When Preston argues that emotions lead to jealousy, hatred, and destruction. After quoting Yeat's poem 'He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven', Partridge admits that it is a heavy price to pay, but one worth paying. Partridge then reaches for his gun, forcing Preston to shoot him. Shortly afterwards, Preston accidentally breaks the vial of his morning dose of Prozium, and begins to experience emotions.
Preston is assigned a new partner, the career-conscious Brandt, who claims to have similarly perceptive abilities in identifying sense offenders. Following a standard police raid on a Librian woman, Mary O'Brian, who has stopped taking Prozium, his emotional confusion is exacerbated during her interrogation. Subsequent attacks and raids into The Nethers expose Preston to illegal objects salvaged from the ruined cities. His fledgling emotions are further stimulated by seeing the sunrise over the skyscrapers of Libria and hearing the first movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. He first acts out of emotion when he makes an excuse not to execute a puppy in The Nethers, saying it should be tested for disease, and "if there's a pandemic spreading in the Nethers, Libria should know about it". Preston has by now ceased taking Prozium and is forced to try and maintain his monotone and emotionless facade in front of his son and the increasingly suspicious Brandt. Over the course of the film, Preston's behavior increasingly mirrors that of Partridge in the beginning, even to the point of repeated dialogue.
Soon, Preston is involved in illegal activities, including regular visits to the Nethers. During one visit, he is forced to kill several Librian policemen. Because of the deaths of these policemen, the Tetragrammaton Council steps up its war against the Underground, mounting more raids and ordering that unidentified persons found in the Nethers are "subject to summary destruction". Brandt, having seen Preston re-arranging his desk (signaling a dislike of conformity) and refusing to personally execute resistance members during a raid in the Nethers, becomes suspicious, Preston is summoned before Vice-Counsel DuPont, a high-ranking member of the Tetragrammaton Council. Preston explains that he is attempting to infiltrate the Resistance in order to destroy it. DuPont tells him that he has heard rumors of a cleric attempting to join the Resistance (a reference to Preston's own unreported activities), and Preston promises to find this traitor. Preston unwittingly makes contact with the Underground, who inform him that they have been watching his progress for some time. He agrees to assassinate Father, an act which will create enough confusion for the Underground to detonate bombs in Libria's Prozium factories and hopefully bring down the Tetragrammaton Council. However, after watching Mary O'Brian's execution in Libria's furnaces, combined with remembering his wife's execution, causes Preston to weep uncontrollably. During this clear demonstration of strong emotion, he is arrested for sense-offense by Brandt.
Brandt brings Preston before DuPont, claiming that he has captured the traitor and accusing Preston of not taking Prozium, killing a police patrol in the Nethers, and conspiring with the Underground to assassinate Father and destroy the Council. Preston, however, turns the tables on Brandt. During a previous raid in the Nethers, Preston secretly swapped guns with Brandt, and so informs the Council that the policemen were killed with the weapon currently in Brandt's possession. Brandt realizes that he has been set up and tries to inform DuPont, but is taken away for execution on the orders of DuPont. Apparently cleared, Preston is released. He returns home to destroy his stashed Prozium before police find it, and is confronted by his young son. Preston fears that his son will betray him to the police for not taking Prozium, but he in fact reveals to Preston that he and his sister have not taken Prozium for some time, and has already hidden his cache of Prozium. Relieved, Preston goes ahead with his plan. As part of an elaborate plot formed with the Underground, the leaders of the Resistance turn themselves in to Preston, who persuades DuPont to grant him an audience with Father, during which he intends to assassinate Father and spark off a general uprising against the Librian government.
Preston arrives for his audience with Father, and is advised that as a security measure, he is to have no weapons in Father's presence and is required to take a lie detector test, which he had first encountered with the Underground. Brandt appears and Preston realizes it is a trap. Via a telescreen, Father speaks to Preston, revealing that he has been aware of Preston's sense-offense, and has staged Brandt's arrest in order to lull Preston into a false sense of security and allow him to think that his assassination scheme can go ahead. The face on the telescreen changes, revealing the face of Vice-Council DuPont, who explains that the real Father died years before, and that the Tetragrammaton Council elected DuPont as the new Head of State. He has simply used the image of Father as a political figurehead.
Preston, however, immediately regains control of his spiraling emotions and, using pistols that he has concealed beneath his ceremonial uniform, kills the guards surrounding him. He makes his way through the corridors of the Tetragrammaton Headquarters, killing several dozen guards, until he encounters DuPont and Brandt at DuPont's office, a richly decorated room which reveals that Libria's ruling elite are sense offenders themselves. A sword fight ensues in which Preston quickly dispatches DuPont's elite bodyguards and slices Brandt's face off. Preston and DuPont engage in a final hand-to-hand gun-kata duel with pistols, and Preston eventually manages to disarm DuPont. Weaponless, DuPont tries to bargain for his life with Preston, arguing that Preston, a human being with emotions, cannot kill him, another human being with emotions. He asks if it is a price worth paying. Remembering the execution, Preston replies quoting Partridge: "I pay it gladly", and shoots DuPont. Preston then destroys the telescreen propaganda machines which broadcast across Libria, and the device which projects holographic images of Father. Realizing that the Tetragrammaton Council is faced with a crisis, the Underground detonates bombs in Libria's Prozium factories.
The film ends from different views: Preston's son smiling from his school desk as the Prozium factories explode, Preston's daughter playing at home with the rescued puppy while the telescreens shut down, the leaders of the Underground cheering at their execution as they hear the bombs explode across Libria, and Preston permits himself a rare smile, watching through the windows of DuPont's office as the citizens of Libria riot in the streets, slaughtering police and Clerics, signaling the collapse of the Tetragrammaton Council.
Themes - Gun Kata
Gun Kata is a fictional gun-fighting martial art discipline that is a significant part of the film. It is based upon the premise that, given the positions of the participants in a gun battle, the trajectories of fire are statistically predictable. By pure memorization of the positions, one can fire at the most likely location of an enemy without aiming at him/her in the traditional sense of pointing a gun at a specific target. By the same token, the trajectories of incoming fire are also statistically predictable, so by assuming the appropriate stance, one can keep one's body clear of the most likely path of enemy bullets.
The Gun Kata shown in Equilibrium is a hybrid mix of Kurt Wimmer's own style of Gun Kata (which he invented in his backyard) and the martial arts style of the choreographer. They disagreed on the appropriate form of Gun Kata, with Kurt Wimmer advocating a more smooth, flowing style and the choreographer supporting a more rigid style. Much of the Gun Kata seen in the movie is based on the choreographer's style (movements are rigid and rapid). Kurt Wimmer's Gun Kata is dispersed sparsely throughout the movie, most notably in the intro scene with the silhouetted man (played by Wimmer himself) practicing with dual pistols. Wimmer's intended form of Gun Kata can be better seen in UltraViolet.[citation needed]
Themes - Prozium
Prozium is a fictional liquid drug which suppresses strong emotions, creating a sedate and conformist society. The loss of emotions is a heavy price, but it is considered to be one paid gladly in exchange for the elimination of war and crime. The name could be considered a portmanteau of Prozac and Valium, two psychoactive drugs. Librium is another drug with relaxant effects, often used to treat severe alcohol or drug withdrawal. Prozium was to be originally called Librium (thus the nation of Libria), this was changed to Prozium when it was discovered that Librium - ironically - was already an existing drug.[citation needed]
Themes - Tetragrammaton
The four Hebrew letters יהוה are often collectively called the Tetragrammaton (from the Greek τετραγράμματον, meaning 'four-letter [word]').[5] These four letters are often transliterated as YHWH, JHWH, YHVH or JHVH, pronounced Yahweh, which is one transliteration of the Hebrew "יַהְוֶה", which, in turn, is a vocalization of the name of God in the Bible.