OF A GOLDEN AGE

In the Genealogy of Morals, Friedrich Nietzsche criticizes the so-called ascetic priest, who redefines good and evil to criticize those in power, but who is also ultimately wrong:

“To demand of strength that it should not express itself as strength, that it should not be a desire to overcome, a desire to throw down, a desire to become master, a thirst for enemies and resistances and triumphs, is just as absurd as to demand of weakness that it should express itself as strength.”

Kurt Wimmer’s 2002 movie Equilibrium, starring handsome, affectless Christian Bale, reminded me of Nietzsche throughout. In the movie, Bale plays the most successful officer in a worldwide police force whose purpose is to destroy all remnants and provocateurs of human emotion. These men are called “clerics,” which speaks to the ascetic priest, though I think it was just Wimmer’s clunky attempt to be ironic.

Anyway, the movie lifts ideas from Yevgeny Zamyatin’s novel We, of course Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. The incongruous ending was one part The Running Man, one part Fight Club.

Overall, the story was good, since of course its source material is tops. It tried too hard to be The Matrix (improbable gunfights, absurdly underpatrolled totalitarian governments, long black coats with peculiar fasteners), and that was its biggest failing. From what I gather, the movie was panned and had a very small release, which is too bad. It would benefit from the spectacle of big-screen visuals and surround sound.

one response