Warner Bros.
Directed by George Lucas
My rating: 4 stars out of 4
IMDb Wikipedia
(DVD, Warner Bros.)
In a dystopian 21st century, the population is controlled by a combination of drugs and religion. They work at dangerous factories where accidents and deaths are common. Video cameras monitor every moment of their lives. LUH works at one of the monitoring stations and is the roommate of factory worker THX. She secretly switches his drugs, causing him to undergo confusion at work and have a sexual encounter at home with LUH, which is strictly forbidden. Authorities arrest both of them. He is convicted and sent to prison, a sort of white nothingness with spare furniture. LUH briefly visits, tells him she is pregnant, then disappears for good. THX and another prisoner decide to escape and explore the boundaries of the white nothingness. In one exhilarating moment, they break out into the mass confusion of the city commute. They eventually steal some futuristic vehicles and take to the freeways, pursued by the ever-present android police. THX manages to break out of the city and witness a sunset for the first time ever. Lucas' feature debut, an expansion of an earlier student film, is like Star Wars on drugs. The sound collage of computerized voices, soothing religious phrases and public announcements is as mesmerizing as it is disorienting. An opening sequence from H.G. Wells' 1936 film Things to Come (replaced by a Flash Gordon serial in the 2004 director's cut) are his obvious cinematic inspirations. Add a heavy dose of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and some Kafkian bureaucracy, and you've got Lucas' masterpiece. Still waiting for the original, unaltered version to become available, but meanwhile the 2004 director's cut apparently does not make any major changes to the story.
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