Equilibirum

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlqpfV9marA

I choose to focus on the film Equilibrium with Christian Bale.  For those of you who haven’t seen this film, it tells the story of a dystopic future in which emotion is banned, and clerics such as Bale kill those with emotion and destroy anything that might provoke emotion such as artwork, music, pets, literature etc.  The storyline is essentially very similar to 1984 with a lot more violence.

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            The film presents several interesting concepts of justice, such as the role of government.  The government presides over every bit of a person’s life and carefully forces them all to conform.  The message here is that without freedom and emotion, we are not truly human. The dangers of technology are another justice issue presented.  In order to keep the population from rebelling, every person takes an anti-emotion drug everyday, and are under constant surveillance.  In order to indoctrinate people into this culture, government run education and media feed the populace a steady stream of propaganda.  Regarding the hero of the film, Christian Bale is an unlikely vigilante because he originally works as the system’s top law enforcer.  The fact that he goes from working for the bad guys to destroying them shows that you can atone for past sins. Violence in the film is justified as a necessary means of overcoming complete oppression by a shadowy totalitarian regime.  While fighting the government Bale kills many people for doing the same job he used to do, without giving them a chance at redemption, a point the movie glosses over.  One final point is that of race; the one major African American actor in this film is an evil killer with no character depth.  The movie posters show them both, seemingly as a symbol of the title, “Equilibrium” with one side representing goodness and white, the other badness and black.