My regular readers know I’m becoming quite the misanthrope in my old age (that’d be 31.) The world is a lot smaller now that we’re all virtually connected via the internet. Everyday that I’m online, I’m bombarded with information, a lot of it bad news. War, famine, rape, death, abuse, injustice. People doing horrible things to the Earth, animals, each other…their own children. It’s always been around, but now we’re ever more aware of it, and it seems to be getting worse.
Becoming a mother has made me hypersensitive to the atrocity. I hate this world we live in. I hate these people who can’t see past their own id. My heart breaks for the innocents, and I’m often afraid for my child, who has to grow up in… a sea of crazy people. I wonder what we can do to effect a significant change in people… It feels like there’s nothing we can do.
And then today, I started watching Equilibrium.
The film follows John Preston (Bale), a warrior-priest and enforcement officer in a future dystopia where both feelings and artistic expression are outlawed and citizens take daily injections of drugs to suppress their emotions.
Based on the concept that emotions are the root of all strife in the world, the logic is that by eliminating these basic emotions, conflict is eliminated. And the concept seems to have merit, if you don’t consider the immediate execution of any persons committing “sense” offenses, as well as the incineration of any emotionally stimulating material– art, music, and apparently, puppies– to be “conflict.”
I’m sure this was the director’s intention, but is it any wonder the insignia for the dystopic powers that be looks like a swastika?
But as you may well have guessed, it is a colorless, pointless, and dull existence, devoid of any happiness…or empathy And in the end, isn’t the absence of empathy the root of the problem our world already faces?
The problem with the film… Sean Bean. Goddammit! Is there any film in which he doesn’t die ?
alienredqueen 