THX 1138 : the future is here
What happens when an individual gives up personal freedom for a group, and what if that group has no freedom of its own?
Imagine a society where everyone has a 4 digit number attached with a 3 letter prefix as their names. A place where men are clinically created to fill a pre designated job, and where consumerism is deeply entrenched, leading people to buy more. It’s however a hollow consumerism where the goods are discarded as soon as they are purchased, with no emotions attached with either. Yet the society revolves around this empty consumerism. To strip the masses of any individuality, they are made to wear identical white suits with their heads shaved. Looking like clones, they walk mindlessly in different directions, working tirelessly towards increasing production. The air is devoid of any emotions, with people sharing nothing but space between them.
It is an economically dictated era, whose only motto is ‘Work hard, increase production, prevent accidents and be happy’. People have been reduced to homogenous masses who keep themselves sedated, which is mandatory by the state. The sedation drugs are meant to keep people emotionally distant, concentrate at work, and prevent any feelings from getting aroused. Drug evasion is a punishable offence, but loving someone is the biggest offence of all. Anyone who has the slightest idea of the Orwellian society, can find resonance of its core idea in THX 1138, where the State is an all-powerful, all-controlling, and there is no scope for personal freedom even in your own home. However, George Lucas, in his first feature film released in 1971, creates a futuristic dystopia which haunts at a deeper level than Orwell’s 1984 in its visual depiction.
It is a film from the future, rather than about the future.
People live with their mates, who are selected randomly by a computer. Ironically, mating is forbidden by the state, and heavy surveillance ensures people conform to the laws. THX 1138 (Robert Duvall) is a clinically born man, who lives with his mate LUH 3417 (Maggie McOmie). Duvall, the protagonist, works in a factory which produces android police officers, buys the State produced goods, and watches holographic television, the only form of entertainment. LUH secretly replaces his etracene (sedation drug) with normal pills, to get him off sedation. She wants THX to love her, as she longs for his touch. THX while still dealing with this change in his diet of sedatives, falters at work, which leads him to a confession booth. When the effects of the drugs wear off, THX experiences undesired feelings like caring, and falls in love with LUH. The state arrests THX and separates him from LUH. While in the detention center, THX meets SEN 5241, who works is the surveillance unit, same as LUH. They both escape the detention center and are joined by SRT 5752, who thinks he is a hologram, while working for the holographic television channel. He longs to be a part of the real world and escapes. Despite being a real person, the State makes him believe otherwise. SRT leads them to the exit and SEN gets separated from them. THX along with SRT goes on to search for LUH, and tries to escape this subterranean city which doesn’t seem to have an exit.
The production design is accurate where everything looks futuristic yet used, showing an already existing place in the future. Lucas takes care of giving it a documentary feel, yet making every shot stylized, in a very Japanese manner. Lucas chooses still, vast camera shots to depict a soulless future where technology guides a sedate humanity. The film is a mixture of the stark white environment with the bluish-white glow of video monitors and numerical computer readouts. A constant computer static can be heard in the background, suggesting even the sound having a worn out quality. The use of sound effects as music, and music as sound effects is the genius of Walter Murch (created sound montages for THX 1138), who creates a symphony of sounds that raises hair at the back of our necks. Sound plays an integral role in this science fiction, giving it an edgy narrative that conveys visceral thoughts.
There are frequent announcements made on the speaker like, ‘Performance perfect is perfect performance’, and vague sentences ‘Are you now? Or have you ever been’ takes the audience into an introspection mode about our humanity. In one scene where Duvall is kept in the detention center, two robots are trying to figure out the mind control system, while trying different knobs on the computer. In doing so, they send him into painful spasms, while dryly discussing which knob is right. It is a deeply disturbing scene, depicting an apathetic attitude of the State towards its people, and how technology is being used to take over a lost humanity.
THX 1138 shows how an unbridled consumer culture that has lost any connection with the organic world can end up in shackles. It’s a film which is filled with portrayal of control, even though we never see who the controller is. The fight of an individual against an oppressive State, resonates in Lucas’ subsequent successes like Star Wars. THX 1138, essentially is a sociological analysis which puts humanity under a microscope, telling us ‘this is who we are, this is where we can wind up, and this is what we stand to lose’ through society’s indifference and passivity, making a conforming mass out of a sea of individuals. You end up wondering if this is the future or a veiled present.
Trivia:
This film has its origin in the small 14 minute student short titled, Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4eb (eb standing for ‘earth borne’), which was directed by Lucas during his time in USC. Written by his colleagues, Matthew Robins and Walter Murch at film school, he took their story for his film project and won the first prize for it. Francis Ford Coppola, impressed by Lucas’ short film helped him in making it into a feature film which was co-produced by American Zoetrope (Coppola) and Warner Brothers. Lucas and Murch co-wrote the screenplay for the feature version of THX 1138.
THX 1138 gets its name from George Lucas’ San Francisco phone number 849 1138. The letters THX correspond to letters found on the buttons 8, 4 and 9.
Director Steven Spielberg considers THX 1138 to be his inspiration for Blade Runner.
This film predicted separate television channels for violence, sex, comedy, and news. When the film was made in 1971, there were no dedicated channels for types of entertainment.
Co-writer Walter Murch said that George Lucas never explained the origins of the character names THX, SEN and LUH to him, but he believes that they are deliberate homonyms for sex, sin and love — the three factors that set them apart from society.
George Lucas considers this to be one of the greatest achievements of his career.
