The Zero Theorem (15.)
Directed by Terry Gilliam.
Starring Christophe Waltz, David Thewlis, Melanie Thierry, Lucas Hedges, Tilda Swinton and Matt Damon. 107 mins
Appropriately for a film that is at least partly about the callousness of modern society, after about ten minutes The Zero Theorem gets drastically downsized. The opening is like an updated Brazil: living in the shadow of a half constructed Shard, Qohen (Waltz) ventures out onto a London street filled with electric cars and targeted, personalised advertising campaigns (as in Minority Report) for the likes of Euphoria Finance, “We put the You into Euphoria” and the Church of Batman the Redeemer. It’s your standard quirky, Gilliam dystopia: Orwellian but perky and garish rather than grey and monotone.
Soon though Qohen gets his wish to work from home and the rest of the film mostly camps outs in his home, an everyday abandoned church. Here he works on the mysterious Zero Theorem, the one that will make the universe clear for the big brother figure The Management (Damon.)
A contained Gilliam is rarely a productive one. Confinement seems to make him cranky and sour and as the film rattles around the standard cluttered Gilliam set, its barbs at modern consumerism offer bitterness rather than insightful and its tackling of the deeper questions of Life the Universe and Everything seem shallow. Gilliam needs to be untethered and allowed to run wild. When he is up to speed his films aren’t just visually inventive, they have a beautiful flow of images that lift up his ideas and whisk you away before you can voice an objection. So, for example, his preference for caricatures is rarely an issue when he’s in full flow but when everybody is just sat around talking, you soon tire of Tilda Swinton playing the Balamory version of Hazel Irvine.
There’s enough of the old Gilliam magic to make Zero Theorem watchable or even re-watchable (there are plenty of ambiguities and mysteries to be sorted out and picked over on DVD) but it is very much the Old Gilliam magic.
Directed by Terry Gilliam.
Starring Christophe Waltz, David Thewlis, Melanie Thierry, Lucas Hedges, Tilda Swinton and Matt Damon. 107 mins
Appropriately for a film that is at least partly about the callousness of modern society, after about ten minutes The Zero Theorem gets drastically downsized. The opening is like an updated Brazil: living in the shadow of a half constructed Shard, Qohen (Waltz) ventures out onto a London street filled with electric cars and targeted, personalised advertising campaigns (as in Minority Report) for the likes of Euphoria Finance, “We put the You into Euphoria” and the Church of Batman the Redeemer. It’s your standard quirky, Gilliam dystopia: Orwellian but perky and garish rather than grey and monotone.
Soon though Qohen gets his wish to work from home and the rest of the film mostly camps outs in his home, an everyday abandoned church. Here he works on the mysterious Zero Theorem, the one that will make the universe clear for the big brother figure The Management (Damon.)
A contained Gilliam is rarely a productive one. Confinement seems to make him cranky and sour and as the film rattles around the standard cluttered Gilliam set, its barbs at modern consumerism offer bitterness rather than insightful and its tackling of the deeper questions of Life the Universe and Everything seem shallow. Gilliam needs to be untethered and allowed to run wild. When he is up to speed his films aren’t just visually inventive, they have a beautiful flow of images that lift up his ideas and whisk you away before you can voice an objection. So, for example, his preference for caricatures is rarely an issue when he’s in full flow but when everybody is just sat around talking, you soon tire of Tilda Swinton playing the Balamory version of Hazel Irvine.
There’s enough of the old Gilliam magic to make Zero Theorem watchable or even re-watchable (there are plenty of ambiguities and mysteries to be sorted out and picked over on DVD) but it is very much the Old Gilliam magic.
