THX 1138

I don't engage in the "Blind Spot" blogathon that any number of movie bloggers do, mostly because I don't know at the start of the year what movies I'm going to get around to seeing over the course of the year, specifically which classics I haven't seen yet but will over the next 12 months. But a movie that would probably fit the Blind Spot blogathon is George Lucas' first feature film, THX 1138.

Set in the distant future, it's a dystopic future as most Hollywood looks at the future seem to be. As in the much earlier Just Imagine, the people don't have traditional names, but letter and number designations that seem more like license plates. Also to impose conformity on the people, they're all shaved bald and dressed in identical all-white outfits, with an exception for some sort of monks and the cybernetic police.

THX 1138, played by Robert Duvall, works at a factory that produces the android police, and goes home to a windowless cell where he lives with LUH 3417 (Maggie McOmie). However, LUH is not THX's wife, as this dystopic future society doesn't have families or sex. (Why anybody even has roommates is not explained.) LUH works at the surveillance center, along with SEN 5241 (Donald Pleasance).

Along with not having any sex and being shaved to all look the same, the people are drugged into conformity so that they don't have any intense emotions. If anything does go wrong, they can step into the nearest confessional, not that it's called this, where they talk to some detached-voice character that might even just be a computer program, filling their heads with platitudes and propaganda about serving the state.

THX obviously has some sort of issues in that he uses one of these confessionals. But he's not the only one. LUH does as well, as she decides to take and switch some of her pills with THX's for whatever reason. This results in the two of them having sex, which is of course highly illegal. SEN figures out that something is going on with THX, and finagles a change in roommates.

Ultimately, however, this results in both THX and SEN getting sent to some sort of prison, where a bunch of non-conformists are kept together (again, why the state wouldn't isolate everybody isn't mentioned). All of these weirdoes are joined by SRT (Don Pedro Colley), a hologram who's suffered from some sort of glitch that's turned him from a programmed hologram into a more or less real human who can interact with everybody else in the environment.

SRT convinces THX and SEN to try to escape, but it's going to be difficult, as none of them have any idea where to escape to. The police are in pursuit, but they have a budget they're not supposed to exceed, which foreshadows how the movie is going to end.

THX 1138 is the sort of futuristic movie where it's probably better not to think about the plot but instead focus on the visual storytelling. That's in no small part because the plot has a whole bunch of holes. How does a society wind up like this in the first place? Even countries that tried to impose communal living on everybody never wound up with something so extreme -- human nature is extremely powerful and fights against this sort of dystopia. And a dystopia this totalitarian isn't powerful enough to capture one little fugitive? Who runs the place and how do they not end up equally conformist?

Because of the plot holes, it can be a bit tough to follow THX 1138. I found myself thinking of A Clockwork Orange, another movie where it was obvious what the movie was trying to do, but which also left me quite cold. There was also Logan's Run, another dystopia in an underground city where people try to escape, winding up with Peter Ustinov in Washington DC.

One other interesting thing with movies about the future is seeing how trapped in the present they are. In the case of THX 1138, that includes surveillance being done with reel-to-reel tape and early 1970s mainframe computers.

Overall, THX 1138 is a visually interesting movie, but one that may not hold up for some people if they think about it too much, not just because of the plot holes, but because what plot there is isn't particularly original, either. It's still absolutely worth a watch, however.