Equilibrium (film)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Equilibrium |
| Original title | Equilibrium |
 | |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 2002 |
| length | 102 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Kurt Wimmer |
| script | Kurt Wimmer |
| production |
Jan de Bont Lucas Foster |
| music | Klaus Badelt |
| camera | Dion Beebe |
| cut |
Tom Rolf William Yeh |
| occupation | |
| |
Equilibrium , also known as Equilibrium - Killer of Emotions , is an American science fiction film directed by Kurt Wimmer in 2002. The plot is heavily inspired and borrowed from the film and novel Fahrenheit 451 , and there are also elements from Aldous Huxley's novel Brave New World , from George Orwell's novel 1984 , Michael Anderson's film Escape into the 23rd Century and George Lucas ' film THX 1138 again. The city “Libria” resembles Fritz Lang's “ Metropolis ”. The film was released on DVD in Germany on September 4, 2003 .
action
The film depicts a dystopia in which, after the Third World War, human emotions were recognized as the decisive trigger for violence and are reduced to a minimum by the psychotropic "Prozium II" . The issuing point of the Prozium II in the government building, the Equilibrium, symbolizes the desired emotional equanimity and gives the film its name. The protagonist John Preston lives in the clean, functioning and fortress-like guarded city of Libria, which is surrounded by the ruins of destroyed buildings, the "Nethers". Every citizen of the city takes " Prozium II " several times a day in order to reduce the intensity of any feelings to a minimum. But there are resisters : so-called "sensory offenders" who have been forced into illegality by their need to feel. In order to fight these "criminals", an elite police unit was created with the "Grammaton clergy". Its task is to find sensory offenders, to eliminate them and to destroy or kill all objects that trigger feelings (such as works of art , literature , sound carriers , decorations or pets ). In action, she uses a special movement technique, the “gun kata ”, during physical disputes . With their help, the Grammaton clergy can even dodge enemy bullets, which makes them almost unstoppable "fighting machines".
Preston is one of the most senior grammar clerics in Libria. In the beginning he has no doubts about the system. Together with his partner Errol Partridge and paramilitary police units, he storms the hiding place of some sensory offenders, where they mechanically kill everyone present and burn several paintings, including the Mona Lisa . Partridge takes a small volume of poetry to hand in personally at the evidence center, since, as he says, the officers responsible for it are often unreliable. Preston then becomes suspicious, and when he inquires at the authorities, it is confirmed that his partner did not hand in the book of poetry as directed. Preston drives into the rebel zone, and when he finds Partridge there, he makes it clear to him that he has to report him. Partridge, who knows exactly that the cremation awaits him in this case , then commits suicide by cocking the cock of his pistol, barely concealed and clearly audible, and allowing Preston to shoot him. Preston is then assigned to Brandt, a new and extremely ambitious cleric, who makes no secret of wanting to make a career and who is suspicious of Preston from the start.
Due to an awkwardness in the bathroom, Preston drops the morning ampoule with Prozium II , whereupon it breaks and he cannot inject it. He is caught by his son, who coolly tells him to go to the Equilibrium immediately and get a replacement. On the way there, however, the lack of the usual dose soon becomes noticeable, and the Equilibrium is closed that day due to a bomb threat. Preston is now forced to grapple with the feelings that are growing in him. Various emotional experiences prompt him to continue to forego the Prozium II . He hides the uninjected ampoules behind the bathroom mirror. This is when he begins to fall away from the system, because in the following missions he is confronted with the brutality and inhumanity of the system, which deeply upsets him. He develops empathy for his fellow creatures and tries to find out more about what it means to be a sentient being by interrogating a sensory offender. At the same time he tries to reconcile the role of the cleric with his new inner life so as not to attract attention. At risk of his own life, he rescues a young puppy before it can be shot by the police. During the interrogation of the sensory offender who was in contact with his former partner, feelings for her awaken in him. However, because she does not cooperate, she is sentenced to death. When his reliability is called into question because of his strange behavior, units arrive to search his apartment. Preston tries to get ahead of them and make the collected Prozium II disappear, but is surprised to find that there is not a single ampoule left in the hiding place. When he turns around, his son stands behind him, who explains to his astonished father that he should find another hiding place for it. Preston realizes that his son apparently stopped taking the drug long after he reported his own mother as a mind offender. From now on Preston tries to contact the resistance in order to work out a plot against the ruler of the state together with the rebels. When the offender he fell in love with is about to be executed, Preston tries to prevent this, but fails. Thereupon he breaks down crying in front of everyone after her death and is arrested by his partner and accused of being a mind offender. However, he can convince his superiors that he has a plan to eliminate the resistance by subverting it. In truth, the leaders of the resistance are said to have themselves arrested by Preston in order to get him an audience with "Father", the leader of the totalitarian regime of Libria, as a reward for his success . At this audience Preston is supposed to kill the "father". With his death, the rebels hope, the system will fall and feelings will return to society.
But the plan fails. Preston failed to convince his superiors of his loyalty, and they used him. Nevertheless, with the help of the skills acquired during his training, the ex-cleric can forcibly pave a bloody path to his “father”. However, as Preston has to find out, this is long dead and only serves as an imaginary leading figure to hold the state together. His successor, the current ruler, is himself a "mind offender" and secretly lives out his feelings. But before Preston can take him out, he must first take on his new partner, who is already hungry for his position, but is killed after a brief duel by Preston with a katana . Now only the actual ruler of Libria stands in the way of freedom, who is defeated in a spectacular battle by the cleric Preston. Preston then destroys Libria's communication systems, whereupon the resistance strikes a decisive blow and destroys the production facilities of the Prozium II . Without Prozium II , an uprising against the regime ensues immediately.
criticism
"Science fiction thriller borrowed from ' Blade Runner ' and ' Matrix ', which tells its story with some charming (also musical) breaks."
“For the good of humanity, a totalitarian drug and brainwashing regime eliminates all emotions. Violations are punished by the 'clerics'. John Preston (Bale) is one of them - until he forgets his pills and becomes a 'sensory offender' himself ... 'Fahrenheit 451' for action junkies: US director Kurt Wimmer unleashed a furious violent ballet with a mere 20 million dollars. Conclusion: Action cracker with brain and atmosphere "
symbolism
The director Kurt Wimmer explained in his DVD commentary from Equilibrium that the figure of the “father” (“Führer”), whom the people obediently follow, should be understood as religiously motivated, just as the entire film is permeated with religious symbols.
When selecting the locations for filming in Berlin, buildings from the National Socialist era such as Tempelhof Airport and the Olympic Stadium , but also contemporary monumental buildings in central Berlin such as Potsdamer Platz train station were used. However, these are barely recognizable in the film due to computer effects. The main hall of Preston's office was filmed in the Bundestag underground station and the combat training in the Bärensaal of the old town hall .
Stylistic means
The soundtrack was written by Klaus Badelt . Wimmer's idea of using only classical music , as he announced in an interview, did not make sense. In the course of production, the decision was made to use music from the genres of alternative rock and techno or drum and bass .
The turning point of the plot is set with the introduction of the first movement of Beethoven's 9th Symphony . The use of this music is reminiscent of A Clockwork Orange ; whose protagonist likes to listen to Beethoven.
When asked about her name, the woman who was exposed as a perpetrator of the senses replied with "O'Brien"; a protagonist from George Orwell's 1984 , who exposes thought crimes for the Ministry of Love , is also named.
Action
For the fight scenes in the film, the director Kurt Wimmer resorted to the equally fictional "Gun Fu", which was invented for Hong Kong action cinema in the 1980s, and named it Gun Kata , which is closely related to the Kung Fu films of the Leaning against director John Woo . As in his films, most of the fighting elements in Equilibrium, just like the meter-high jumps of the old Kung Fu films, cannot be physically performed at all without camera trick technology or other aids. In the film, the Grammaton clergy usually use two pistols, but scenes with the HK G36 assault rifle or katanas can also be seen. The Gun-Kata includes different postures of the body and the weapons as well as an even firing pattern, which should minimize the statistical probability of being hit by bullets in an exchange of fire and maximize the probability of hitting as many opponents as possible.
In the 2006 film Ultraviolet , the main character also uses gun kata in some action scenes.
Details
After a mission in the Nether, the cleric Errol Partridge takes "some kind of book" (Preston later said) with him without delivering it as evidence, and reads it secretly. He is surprised and killed by Preston. This "booklet" The Poetry of William Butler Yeats really exists. It is a literary theoretical work by Sandra Gilbert, published in 1965 by "New York Monarch Press Inc." It reproduces some poems by William Butler Yeats (1865–1939, Nobel Prize for Literature 1923); Errol Partridge reads one to Preston. A new translation of all Yeats poems into German was published in 2005.
This one poem is called (in the new translation from 2005) "He wants the clothes of heaven" and reads:
- "If I had the embroidered clothes of heaven,
- Interwoven with golden and silver light,
- The blue, dull and dark clothes
- The night, the day and half the light
- I laid them out at your feet:
- But I'm poor, only have my dreams
- I laid them out at your feet
- Step gently, you step on my dreams. "
In the film the text is a little different. There Errol Partridge recites:
- "But because I am poor,
- I only have my dreams
- I spread the dreams at your feet.
- Tread lightly
- You step on my dreams. "
A modification of the last movement is also used as an introduction to the final fight between Preston and Dupont. Dupont warns Preston with the sentence
- "Watch out Preston, you are stepping on my dreams!"
before he grabs the gun lying on the desk and starts the fight against Preston. In literary terms, the arc here stretches to the nursery rhyme “ Oranges and Lemons ”, which in the novel 1984 is a means of convicting the protagonist of a thought crime. Here, too, the last sentence of the nursery rhyme is modified and quoted when it comes to the confrontation with authority.
The name of the psychotropic drug Prozium used in the film is made up of the drugs Prozac (antidepressant) and Valium (sedative), which are very common in the USA .
Web links
- Equilibrium in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Equilibrium in the online film database
- Equilibrium atRotten Tomatoes(English)
Individual evidence
- ^ Equilibrium: Production Notes , cinema.com
- ^ Equilibrium Commentary: Kurt Wimmer
- ^ Marxism and the Movies, edited by Mary K. Leigh, Kevin K. Durand, McFarland, 2013, p. 127 Online
- ^ Equilibrium. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ^ Equilibrium. In: Cinema.de. Hubert Burda Media, accessed on June 16, 2013 .
- ↑ http://www.equilibriumfans.com/commentarya9.htm