‘The Zero Theorem,’ is a much bigger movie in its advertisements. The
production design provided by the endlessly inventive mind of its director,
Terry Gilliam, after being crammed into a two minute commercial gives off the impression
of a visual epic on the scale of his previous works Brazil, The Adventures of Baron Manchusen, and most recently The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnussus. In
actuality much of the movie takes place within the main room of a decaying
cathedral now inhabited by a recluse named Qohen Loeth (Christoph Waltz). There
are a few other set pieces like a workplace and a street and a virtual reality
beach, but other than that the locations are quite limited. It is a rather
dramatic exercise in how to get as many visually inventive designs within the
smallest amount of budget possible. Terry Gilliam is at the forefront of
stretching the digital buck to its breaking point.
Unfortunately besides the production design, “The Zero Theorem” is not a
particularly enjoyable film and given the absurdity of the production design in
relation to the main metaphor of the film, it cannot be considered a good film
either.
The film is supposedly set in a futuristic dystopia that mixes the
cynicism of Blade Runner with the
color palette of Speed Racer. It is a
weird futuristic dystopia in that the technology is new and unfamiliar but also
far worse than what we currently have today. Everything is way more complicated
and far more annoying to use than it has to be. Take the computer/video game
console that Qohen Loeth works on at his job. Not only does he have to manually
pedal the thing with his feet, but the controller he uses looks like the worst
idea Nintendo ever had went and ate all their other controllers. The good
people at Apple who have dedicated their lives to making technology non–threatening
for the general public should look on this movie with a sense of horror.
Gilliam did something similar to this in Brazil when he used warped technology (airducts to be exact) to actively
demonstrate the oppression of a totalitarian government. But ‘The Zero Theorem’
is not a totalitarian dystopia but a consumerist dystopia run by a business
named ‘Management.’ It is not at all clear why this business would want to
actively oppress its customers with a terrible user experience. For all of this
movie’s preachiness about the diminishment of the individual in a corporatized
landscape, the most culpable villain here is problem Gilliam himself. He is the
one that came up with all these profoundly annoying contraptions and he has a long history
of treating human beings as cannon fodder for whims and jokes (see Monty
Python).
His main character in this movie is especially pathetic. Played hairless
and socially castrated by Christoph Waltz. What he wants is to be a recluse
sitting next to a phone in his cathedral where someday he may get a call that
will explain to him the meaning of his life. (Movies that dwell on the meaning
of life generally give unsatisfactory answers and this one does not disappoint
in its disappointment. Management has an answer to why they have assigned Qohen
to work on the Zero Theorem, a theory that proves that there is no meaning of
life, but again the production design of the movie argues against that
explanation.) Qohen refers to himself in the royal first person and claims he
is dying. It is a metaphor to be sure, but the metaphor is so obvious that it
swallows up the viewer’s ability to think it deep. It is just there and might
as well not be because the movie is not persuasive in its arguments.
A lot of things are here that might not as well be. Qohen attends a
party with a host that is dressed in a fat tiger costume. There is no
particular reason for the fat tiger costume. It is just another in a long list
of visual gags that make the viewer titter in a ‘hey what is that doing there?’
vibe but in context are meaningless artistic choices. The character might have
well been dressed up as a walrus or a unicorn or not dressed up at all. It does
not lend anything to the story. Critics complain all the time about the
arbitrariness of huge blockbusters but then give leeway to smaller independent
films like this. Well, in my opinion the standards should apply to both. What
we see on the screen should not merely be whimsical indulgences? They need to
add or complement what the story is about. If this were a bigger film it would be
bad. Being a small independent film does not make it any less bad.
There also must be noted that there is a female character (played by
Melanie Thierry) that has the sad and far too common fate of having to somehow
someway fall in love with an utterly unattractive and much older man. I suppose
when you are in charge of a movie’s budget, one of the perks is that you can
hire women willing to portray this sort of thing. The honest thing to do though
is to make the character mainly interested in money too.
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