Equilibrium

Written by: Haroun Zayed
Set in the futuristic and dystopian city state Libria. Humanity has scarcely survived a nuclear third world war. Reasoning the humanity can not survive another world war, the leaders of the world decide that no price is too high to avoid another one. In this civilization war is blamed on the great “evil” of human nature: emotion.
The movie begins with a speech from Libria’s great leader, a man referred to as Father. Father never speaks to anyone from the outside world but rules the governing body known as the Tetragrammaton council. The Tetragrammaton strives to create identical lives for every individual in order to instil peace and order to the world. Everyday individuals inject themselves with a drug known as Prozium that prevents them from feeling or expressing any emotion. In this world everyone shows little to no emotion and speaks in a robotic monotonous voice. However as in every society there are those that rebel this regime and refuse to take this drug. These individuals live in what is known as the “nethers”, they strive to keep banned materials that provoke emotion. They are those individuals who truly know the benefits of emotion and accept the responsibility that accompanies it.
The Tetragrammaton council deals with these individuals by means of grammaton clerics. These clerics are trained from childhood to be ruthless emotionless killers by means of a firearm martial art that encompasses optimal shooting and evasion techniques known as gun kata.
The protagonist of the movie is grammaton cleric first class John Preston (Christian Bale), Libria’s highest ranking cleric. As the movie begins he and his partner Errol Partridge (Sean Bean) enter the nethers and eradicate a group of individuals that are part of the resistance. Upon returning Preston realises his partner is a sense offender (an individual who stops taking Prozium) and proceeds to kill him. Preston is then assigned a new partner, the career-conscious Brandt (Taye Diggs). The following morning Preston accidentally breaks his Prozium dose and is unable to replace it leaving him to feel emotion. This sudden feeling of emotion awakens Preston to the horrors of this new world. From then on he stops taking Prozium and attempts to live a life of façade in front of the very observing Brandt. As the movie progresses Preston is subject to arresting a sense offender, Mary O’Brien (Emma Watson). Marry opens his eyes to the beauty of emotion and further confirms Preston’s will to bring down the government. Preston then goes on to try and locate the resistance and go about fulfilling his quest. This science fiction thriller is sure to keep you entertained with the many well coordinated fight scenes as well as giving you a jaw dropping view of a possible futuristic Stalinesque city. Christian Bale does a fantastic job transitioning from an emotionless cold blooded killer to an emotion filled human that is discovering the world again.
Although Equilibrium does a great job in creating a futuristic world where most of humanity experiences no emotion, it is highly unlikely that this will ever come to be. This movie is based upon the idea that one can take a drug to suppress all emotions. This is extremely unlikely to occur because of the complications that would arise from attempting to create a drug.
Although Equilibrium does a great job in creating a futuristic world where most of humanity experiences no emotion, it is highly unlikely that this will ever come to be. This movie is based upon the idea that one can take a drug to suppress all emotions. This is extremely unlikely to occur because of the complications that would arise from attempting to create a drug. Although the chemicals behind certain emotions are known, the mechanism by which all human emotion is activated is not entirely recognized. Furthermore even if the mechanism is known, the consequences to the body of suppressing the many chemicals would create such an imbalance in the brain that severe side effects would be sure to follow.
To add on to that if all of the above is bypassed, the rapidity by which this drug works is completely unrealistic. Drugs that are currently created by man to help establish equilibrium for patients with depression or bipolar disorder take long periods of time to build up and long period of time to wear off. Hence, Preston should not have been subject to emotion so quickly due to missing a single dose. Moreover, using a drug that wears off in less than 24 hours means the entire population is just a day’s delayed drug shipment away from revolution. It would be interesting though if similar drugs currently on the market would work at such rapidity as it would help my psychiatric patients to significant ends.
In the end Equilibrium is an extraordinary movie that engages the audience in a hypothetical futuristic world. It’s a captivating movie filled with great fight scenes, great characterization and a highly entertaining yet eerie civilization. However this movie can be very dense at times and if you are not the type of individual who can stand watching a movie with long periods of silence at a time then this movie is definitely not for you. Nonetheless this is a great movie that is definitely worth renting if you plan on staying home on the weekend. You will not be disappointed.



Bibliography
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Macdonald, Cynthia. The Globe and Mail. 14 August 2009. 22 April 2010

Alt, Jason. The Unknown Movies. 2002. 28 April 2010 .