THX 1138 (1971) - film review

The inhabitants of a futuristic underground city live a highly regimented existence, kept in a docile state by compulsory drug consumption.  Their activities are constantly monitored and they are policed by androids with blank metal faces.  They are encouraged to work hard so that they can earn the credits to buy functionless items which they incinerate as soon as they get back home, home being a characterless room equipped with the latest in holographic entertainment.  Reproduction has been entirely mechanised, so there is no need for sexual intercourse, which is now an illegal activity.  Faith, by contrast, is encouraged, and everyone is expected to worship regularly at the little uni-chapels that are scattered around the city.  THX 1138 works in android construction, a highly skilled job.  He shares a room with LUH 3417 who, unbeknown to him, has stopped taking her drugs and has been replacing his pills with an inactive substitute.  As the effect of the drugs wears off, THX begins to experience unfamiliar feelings and feels compelled to engage in illicit sexual congress with his roommate.   Realising that they have broken the law, THX and LUH decide that they must escape from the city before their crimes are detected.  Before they do so, THX is told by LUH’s work supervisor, SEN 5241, that he intends to replace LUH as his roommate.  THX betrays SEN to the city authorities for abusing his position but is himself arrested when he fails to perform his job to an adequate standard, revealing that he has stopped taking the nerve-stabilising drugs.  THX, SEN and LUH find themselves in a limbo prison, from which there is no apparent means of escape...

George Lucas’s off-the-wall debut feature made next to no impact when it was first released in 1971, and was subsequently overshadowed by his far more successful sci-fi movie Star Wars (1977).  Whilst not a mainstream hit, THX 1138 has always enjoyed a cult status, but recently the film has experienced something of a reappraisal, thanks in part to Lucas’s decision to issue a new cut of the film in 2004, with new digital effects and a few additional scenes.  Many critics have come round to the view that this is probably Lucas’s best work to date.  It is certainly his most daring.  

THX 1138 originated as a 15-minute short that George Lucas made as a film student in 1967.  This short, a dystopian vision of the future in which a man escapes from a tightly controlled underground society, won several awards and drew the attention of film director Francis Ford Coppola.  It was Coppola who encouraged the 24-year-old Lucas to remake this film as a commercial feature and who used his influence with Warner Brothers to help secure a 0.7 million dollar budget, a tidy sum for a rookie filmmaker.  

In expanding the original screenplay, Lucas and his co-screenwriter Walter Murch were very much influenced by contemporary issues, such as increased use of surveillance by the state (as a means of crushing opposition to the Vietnam War) and burgeoning consumerism.  THX 3118 became as much a statement on life in America in the late 1960s as it was a dark vision of the future, a vision in which mankind has been robbed of his humanity and lives a pointless zombie-like existence in a sterile subterranean world.  The central story concept, of a man heroically driven to escape from the world he knows in pursuit of a better world, is one of the recurring themes in Lucas’s oeuvre.  This would be an essential plot driver in his next two films,  American Graffiti (1973) and Star Wars (1977).  

THX 1138 is by far the most experimental and ambiguous of George Lucas’s films, and this could explain why it provides a far richer viewing experience than his subsequent Star Wars films.  The influence of Lucas’s idols, the filmmakers Jean-Luc Godard and Akira Kurosawa, is felt in the construction and design of the film, with Godard’s Brechtian approach to character effectively combined with Kurosawa’s striking stylisation.  Those familiar with Godard’s work will notice the plot similarities with his 1965 film Alphaville, which also portrays a regimented society where love has been abolished.  The literary influences - George Orwell’s 1984, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot - are so glaringly obvious that their authors almost deserve a writer’s credit, but Lucas and Murch effectively build on these ideas and create a work that is both profound and dazzlingly original.  A compelling performance from Robert Duvall (in his first leading role, his head shaved along with every other member of the cast) adds to the film’s authenticity and humanity.

It is possible that THX 1138 may well stand the test of time much better than Star Wars, which is already beginning to look dated and slightly corny.  In contrast to the comic book fantasy of Star Wars, THX 1138 has a chilling reality to it.  The future it portrays is so disturbingly close to our own present Hell-on-Earth that we believe it could be true.  Certainly, the film’s depiction of a society that is constantly under surveillance, and where people are driven like cattle into mindless consumption (buy and be happy) has a much greater resonance today than it did when the film was made.  Unsettling yet also humorous (in a very black sense), THX 1138 is assuredly George Lucas’s most inspired and substantial film to date.   Had this film been a hit on its first release, Lucas’s career may have taken a completely different course...

© James Travers 2010

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