Chris Knipp Writing: Movies, Politics, Art


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PostPosted: Fri Sep 19, 2014 4:19 pm 
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EXTERIOR FROM ZERO THEOREM

Waiting for Godot's phone call: a feast of small delights for Gillianites, and some nice casting

Gilliam's low-budget fantasmagoria, shot in a studio in Bucharest, is a kind of reprise of his 1985 retro-future landmark, Brazil, and though it's not up to that level, the charm of its mise-en-scène and its cast make it watchable. Both movies aren't about any future so much as Gilliam's inner fantasy world and how he sees the present. Brazil was then; this is now. The Zero Theorem's world is hyper-commercialized, overworked, and continuously invasive. Everything is loud, bright-colored, cacophonous, and jittery. Forget nanotechnology: the giant Main Frame is a tentacled self-regenerating monster housed in a beautiful, shadowy space like a Victorian railway station. It's 1984 with bubbly good cheer, African theme parties, streets awash in Smart Cars, and lots more gadgetry. Management (played briefly by Matt Damon) is a white-haired man in a suit who everybody works for running a mega-company ("Corporations sans Frontières") called ManCom. Ads follow you down the street. A new religion declares Batman a God ("Church of Batman the Redeemer Needs You"). The shaved-headed protagonist, Qohen Leth (Christoph Waltz) is a fussy "entity cruncher" (mere numbers aren't important, he insists). He's an "antisocial apparatchik" loaded down with "existential angst" (Telegraph) hacking out software programs for ManCom in the tubes filled with glowing liquid that are the current way of conveying compuer files. Qohen, whose supervisor Joby (an enthusiastic David Thewlis, in a reverse wig) keeps calling "Quinn," is an agoraphobic loner who once had a life but for decades has lived only for a phone call that will tell him what it's all about. Who cares? The screenplay, which comes from a Florida creative writing instructor called Pat Rushin, seems a bit puerile: all the fun is in seeing how Gilliam twists and embellishes its outlines into a Terry Gilliam movie.

"That kid could program before he could walk," says Joby of cocky 15-year-old Bob (Lucas Hedges, the evil scout in Monrise Kingdom ), when he and Qohen meet him working at the Main Frame. Turns out he's not a "summer intern" as Joby says but Management's son, and mysteriously ill (he keeps dabbing his nose with a hanky). We will see more of Bob after Qohen, following a bizarre physical exam by three doctors (Peer Stormare, Sanjeev Bhaskar, and Ben Whishaw). Qohen demands therapy and is given a brightly packaged tube of "Dr. Shrink-ROM," packaged help programmed to respond to his personal needs. Dr. Shrink is played by the inimitable Tilda Swinton, speaking with broad Scottish accent, in a hideous wig and with fake buck teeth recalling her bigger recent turn in Snowpiercer (shot in Prague instead of Bucharest: Eastern Europe has become a bizarre fantasy-factory). Computers, by the way, look more like in-house cinema video games or pinball machines, and when screens are smashed they seem to regenerate. Programming appears in virtual 3D as moving big clear cubes covered with mathematical symbols into pyramids of other such cubes that sometimes explode or crumble the way buildings did in Nolan's Inception. Is it childish to enjoy watching all this? One would have liked more of Tilda, and less of grumpy Christoph, who has annoying habits, like referring to himself in the plural all the time and uselessly correcting Joby's mispronunciation of his name.

After his exam and an inconclusive meeting with Management at a party (he declares his programmer mad), Qohen is granted permission to work at home in his abandoned chapel. From then on most of the action takes place there. And he has visitors. Waltz, though wonderfully assured and able to hold the screen, may have been better used by Tarantino. But Mélanie Thierry, as his temptress Bainsley, is far more charming and fun here than she was in her debut star turn as Bernard Tavernier's Princess of Montpensier. She's a revelation, and as Bainsley, the sexy, cuddly girl who pursues Qohen, Gilliam wasn't that over-enthusiastic when he called her "a combination of Judy Holiday and Marilyn Monroe." She has that combination of ditsy, smart, and sensuously needy that combining those two divas might produce, if the resulting pretty young lady were French. Young Bob, momentarily burdened with a huge desire to pee, arrives to help out, and camps a while, ordering in pizza and livening things up, like Bainsley. Together they bring out the dry soul's warmth and humanity, and he ends up on a spectral pleasure beach with a sky like in Llyn Foulkes' painting The Lost Frontier, but much nicer. Lucas Hedges, like Mélanie Thierry, is a surprise casting coup.

Zero Theorem has already been poorly received by a host of critics (Metacritic raging 54%). It's true, this is a cluttered and confused film, "pilfering themes" from Brazil without much "idea how to develop them" (Robbie Collin, The Telegraph). But as many admit, there is much to like here, though the movie "works most effectively moment by moment and in the details" (Geoff Pevere,Globe and Mail, Toronto). Gilliam says this is the lowest budget he's worked with in years, but don't be fooled by that. The production and costume design are memorable and rich. This is no snooze-fest like Gilliam's ill-starred The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. It provides many pleasures. It's future with Blu-Ray and DVD will be long and happy, though sitting up close to the big screen would be better, to see all the funny and ingenious throwaway details. Shot on film; some CGI; no weaponry or violence.

The Zero Theorem, debuted at Venice last year, 2 September 2013, with months of festival appearances thereafter. Out in the UK 14 March 2014, in France 25 June, not faring well critically there either (Allociné press rating 2.4). On 19 August it had a US internet release; it will enter Stateside cinemas 19 September.

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MÉLANIE THIERRY

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CHRISTOLF WALTZ, LUCAS HEDGES

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.


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