Equilibrium - has anyone seen it?

POSTED BY: Esther
UPDATED: Tuesday, January 9, 2007 17:38
VIEWED: 11162
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ESTHER

Thursday, August 10, 2006 2:25 PM

Quote:
It assumes everybody would be a pacifist without emotions. Look to the rest of the animal kingdom and you'll see intraspecific competition. Our wars are just an extension of that. As a matter of fact, organised warfare is known to happen among ants - not the most emotional of species.

So you assume, animals have no emotion. I think, on the contrary - most mammals not only have emotions, it's the only thing they do have, because what they're missing is intellect (sorry to offend any animal-lovers. I live with two cats my own self).

I don't think, the movie states, that people without emotions are pacifists - it's just that people without emotions are controllable (all the proium-controlled clerics and policemen are not pacifistic at all). That's what happens at the ants - they have no emotions, so they can be controlled, they "function", there is no opposition - the worst thing for a totalitarian system. on the other side, someone with emotions is not necessarily a "warmonger". He is just an individualist.

I can agree with you, that the movie is bad in the sense, that it is not all that clear in its basic statement. It always talks about "feeling", when in fact, it's all about "control". Obviously, Kurt Wimmer was not good enough, to get his point across (or didn't even realise what it was, himself - that can happen with artwork).

Esther

DREAMSOFTHESPIDER

Monday, August 14, 2006 11:00 PM

love this movie. I was actually working a couple months at a movie theatre while it was playing, and while I was doing the sweep-throughs, I'd see this silly fighting, and I'd have to run out to avoid giggling. But the more I saw, the less I giggled and really got intrigued and finally stayed after work to watch the whole thing.

Select to view spoiler:

my heart broke when the kids tell their father that they'd stopped dosing themselves after their mum died

And yes, parrallel to Serenity with the government trying to make a perfect society by committing monstrosities against it's citizens, Mal being "a fan of all seven [deadly sins]", our basic right, our freewill, to be flawed, to be jealous. Equilibrium certainly isn't as finely crafted in it's logic as Serenity, it's certainly more stylized and artistic.

And of course, Sean Bean. He just elevates everything he's in. How I wish his character had been explored more. I'd rewatch Troy just for him :P

~Tzegha

CLJOHNSTON108

Tuesday, January 9, 2007 4:20 PM

Ebert gave a nice review of it...
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20021206/REV
IEWS/212060303/1023
...but I found it weird how utterly wrong his summary of the inciting events was...

Quote:
Preston is a top operative, but is hiding something. We see him pocketing a book that turns out to be the collected poetry of W.B. Yeats, a notorious Sense Offender. He has kept it, he explains, to better understand the enemy (the same reason censors have historically needed to study pornography). His duties bring him into contact with Mary O'Brien (Emily Watson), and he feels--well, it doesn't matter what he feels. To feel at all is the offense. Knowing that, but remembering Mary, he deliberately stops taking his Prozium: He loves being a Cleric, but, oh, you id.

(Not even close to how things happened!)

About the third time I watched my EQ DVD, I burst into tears at the scene where Preston's ripping the covering off his window and seeing his first sunrise (probably because I love sunrises/sunsets). Very cathartic.

Even though an official soundtrack was never released, a member of the EquilibriumFans Forums posted a link to his FTP site a couple of years ago, where he had 47 MP3s of Klaus Badelt's OST, so I snapped 'em up!
They're some of the most-listened-to tracks on my iPod!
http://equilibrium.proboards17.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=disp
lay&thread=1091454186

Quote:
Originally posted by TomOnkelCannabia:
btw: Did any bod watch Ultraviolet
It's the newest movie from the director of Equilibrium. It's pretty much the most unrealistic movie I've ever seen. The action scenes are just completely exaggerated, you've just got to laugh and every conflict is justt solved by the heroine kicking everybodys ass, even if she surrounded by 300 armed soldiers

Well, if the comic book montage of the opening credits is any clue, Wimmer was making a living comic book.

But I could really use those Flat Space™ (dimension compressing) and Gravity Levelling technologies!

MRBEN

Tuesday, January 9, 2007 4:25 PM

Personally, I really like Equilibrium. But I know others who don't - each to their own.

It got pulled pretty quickly from the cinemas in the UK, because of the opening sequence, which talks about a war at the beginning of the 21st century, and flashes up pictures of dictators, including one Saddam Hussein. And then the Iraq War kicked off, thus making the intro a little less than tasteful for some people.

mrben

"Carpe Aptenodytes"
http://www.jedimoose.org

CLJOHNSTON108

Tuesday, January 9, 2007 5:22 PM

Also, Kurt Wimmer's commentary on the EQ DVD is one of the best I've ever heard!

Wish he'd had one on the Ultraviolet DVD, but that'll probably have to wait until a Director's Cut comes out, with all 30 minutes the studio cut restored.

STORYMARK

Tuesday, January 9, 2007 5:38 PM

I really enjoy Equilibrium. Bale, Bean and Watson are great in it, and the gun kata is fun as hell to watch. But it's also a very derivative movie (Farenheit 451, 1984), with some gaps in the plot, and some sections that drag a bit. I wouldn't put it over The Matrix myself, though.

Ultrviolet was indeed a piece of utter crap. Tends to make me think that Equalibrium was good in spite of it's director.

A possible mitigating factor is the fact that Wimmer was kicked off Ultraviolet before the final edit. Now, that could mean that the studio saw what he shot, realized it was crap, and gave him the boot. But, it could mean there was a better movie he never got to finish.

As for the White uniform thing, yes there was an explaination that it was a dress uniform, but really, that just struck me as a quick explaination for a very simple visual mataphor - white vs. black/good vs. evil. The sloppy visual metaphors in Ultraviolet (particularly the eye of the needle scene) reinforced this perception in me.

"I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him."

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