George Lucas, “THX1138” (1971)
Before he became famous for his “Star Wars” series of films, George Lucas was noted chiefly for his dystopian sci-fi flick “THX1138” which he conceived originally as a student and then later developed under Francis Ford Coppola’s mentoring. This film, in its remastered form (2004), is a visually stunning piece in which viewers can see some of the ideas and elements that surface in Lucas’s later more famous SF films. The plot is surprisingly layered as well for such an early work in Lucas’s career: it comments on political and cultural trends in Western societies in the 1970s, serves as an Adam and Eve allegory and also incorporates familiar Hollywood plot tropes such as a climactic chase in creative ways that fit the film’s highly distinctive and idiosyncratic visual style.
The eponymous THX1138 (Robert Duvall) is one of many worker bees, all looking exactly alike and dressed in the same white featureless clothes, in a machine-like society that suppresses individual expression through various ingenious means: people spy on one another and report violations to a central authority that is present only within the machines that people operate; everyone is required to take drugs that regulate their moods, feelings and thoughts; and people worship a religion that combines both advertising spin and elements of Christianity that emphasise prophecy and confession of sins. Lately THX1138 has been dissatisfied and depressed about his work on the police robot making assembly line; he refuses to take his chill pills, can’t keep down his food and watching entertainment that stresses emotional distance from others and constant acts of violence makes him sick. His room-mate LUH3417 (Maggie McOmie) who has actually been substituting inactive pills for his medication (she herself has become disillusioned with the system in which they both work) suggest they both try to escape their society and break out of the physical confines of the city in which they live.
The two develop a close emotional and sexual relationship which is picked up by the unseen authorities. THX1138’s work supervisor SEN5241 (Donald Pleasance) attempts to transfer THX1138 away from LUH3147 but THX1138 files a complaint against this. Eventually THX1138 and LUH3147 are imprisoned in separate limbo worlds for drug evasion and having a sexual relationship. LUH3147 manages to contact THX1138 and resume their relationship but again are separated; THX1138 ends up deeper in limbo where he meets SEN5241 who himself is in limbo because of THX1138’s previous complaint against him. Despite this, SEN5241 and THX1138 agree to work together to escape limbo and the city altogether. When other prisoners with them are unwilling to follow, the two men meet a third prisoner SRT5752 (Don Pedro Colley) and the trio escape limbo together.
SEN5241 ends up separated from the other men during their escape and wanders the bowels of the city, overwhelmed by what he sees and seeking religious solace, before being arrested by police robots. The other two men discover the dreadful fate suffered by LUH3147 for her rebellion and realise the same awaits them. They steal jet cars and try to make their way out of the city before the police robots can catch them.
The film’s style is low-key and unemotional: human characters are flat and the robots if anything seem much more animated but that in itself is perhaps satirical commentary on the nature of modern technology-based societies and what they do to people. Duvall’s passive character hardly amounts to much in that he follows others’ suggestions more than he initiates his own, giving the actor not a great deal to work with; but then the character is perhaps representative of the average Joe in apathy and potential for change. Pleasance plays a more forceful character and embodies more of the film’s messages about religion and the role of revolutionary leaders in society: SEN5241 is ultimately a tragic figure in which aspects of Jesus Christ’s life and role can be seen (and which comments on religion as the opium that both comforts and represses) and one assumes that after his second arrest he like LUH3147 will also die horribly.
The plot itself is not very original and its end is both thrilling and depressing, hearkening back to Adam and Eve leaving the Garden of Eden and having to work for their living. The meaning is obvious: freedom might be easier for people to achieve than they realise – the society allocates only so many resources to chasing THX1138 before it decides to let him go – but once achieved, people must work hard to keep it. The original aspect of the film is in its incorporation of accounting as a factor in THX1138’s escape: the machines allocate a budget to capturing THX1138 and once that budget is exceeded, THX1138 must be allowed to go free even though the police robot is nearly successful in grabbing him. Therein lies a difference between humans and machines: machines set a price on an endeavour and on its efficient pursuit whereas for humans, no price may be too great to achieve something that in any case should not be quantified. (Although this message should not be taken too far as in the context of throwing too many good soldiers after a bad cause that has already wasted too many of their comrades.)
The film might also be seen as a coming-of-age film in which THX1138 represents stages in growing up and realising that to be truly oneself, one must leave behind the strictures of small-town society. One may have mentors along the way to motivate and point the way ahead. Thus the prisons and labyrinths shown in the film are the way they are because the restrictions exist in the prisoners’ minds as a result of life-long indoctrination; only when one questions what one has long accepted without question can one escape as THX1138 and his companions do. However it’s easy to lose faith as SEN5241 does.
For a film made on a very tight budget, the visual look is smooth and beautiful (Lucas did add CGI effects when he reviewed it 2004) and this will be what holds most viewers spellbound. The police robots bear more than a passing resemblance to C3PO of “Star Wars” and it’s likely this is a retrospective aspect added in 2004 as well.
It’s a pity that “THX1138” has been overshadowed by Lucas’s later films which are heavy on the special effects and visuals but woefully lightweight on plot and message: while not perfect itself, this film is an intelligent one that poses several questions about the nature of people’s relationship with past and present societies as individual and group members. Past societies may have restricted us with religion and modern societies restrict us through machines, ideologies and certain modes of thinking about and seeing the world, but then we have made them so ourselves and we can choose to remain restricted or to set ourselves free and refashion society anew. This is a message that Lucas himself might have done well to heed.