Film Review: Equilibrium (2002)

Equilibrium (2002) is a film that I most highly recommend to friends of liberty. Written and directed by Kurt Wimmer, it portrays a dystopian future under a total State. It stars Christian Bale, and also appearing are Taye Diggs, Emily Watson, Angus MacFedyen, with Sean Bean and Sean Pertwee in cameos. Much of it was filmed in old Berlin and has the creepy feel of Nazi-era architecture and the black-and-white newsreels of those days.

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It is possible that Wimmer borrowed much of his vision for this flick from Orwell, Huxley, Bradbury, Fritz Lang, etc., those who early-on warned us about the horrors of Government Control. But his own vision here, championing individualism against conformity, is very powerful and worth watching for its own virtues. I like the dark mood of this movie. And libertarians will probably like the overall story.
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Without giving spoilers, I will just say that in the future, after a devastating World War III, the rulers among the survivors try to build a world in which war will never happen again. They see elemental Human Nature to be the source of all danger and evil (a “Hobbesian” or “original sin” outlook). To prevent war and murder, all war-like human emotions such as anger and hate must be eliminated. So everyone is required by law to take regular “interval” doses of a powerful drug which completely kills all emotions, all feelings and all passions.

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All positive feelings and passions are killed also – all emotions connected with love, empathy, art, literature, music, etc. – but this is considered to be a worthwhile trade-off as long as murder and war are gone. It is a world of humorless zombies. The shuffling human masses remind me a lot of Fritz Lang’s classic film, “Metropolis” (1926).
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The punishment for "sense crimes" (i.e., not taking your interval dose and thus being enabled to "feel") is prompt execution. All artworks, all books and all music are destroyed immediately when discovered. There are no compromises or exceptions. The primary enforcers of this totalitarian rule are the Grammaton Clerics, warrior-priests whose implacable dedication and extreme "gun kata" martial arts training make them indomitable.

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I did notice one piece of artwork that was apparently allowed to exist as an exception, and it was oddly located in the office of one of the very top elite rulers (Angus MacFedyen). It was a statue of Atlas, crushed down under the oppressive weight of the world he supported. Hmm, there is something familiar here.

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There is an underground resistance movement in this future society, and they consider their best ally to be “human nature” itself. This would be the Lockean or Jeffersonian view of humanity, a view that trusts people with the possession of freedom.

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Can you imagine if the very first piece of music you ever heard was Beethoven's Ninth Symphony? How would you feel?

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-Ross Barlow.