Being severely low on funds, the majority of my film viewing has revolved around the American New Wave in the 1970s (frankly, I think we’re far due for another one), jumping off of the viewing list from a book I’m crawling through, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. This film, George Lucas’ first feature, based on a shorter film he made for school, nearly bankrupted American Zoetrope and so nearly ended his career before it began. I was not eager at all to watch.
I ended up liking the story presented here far more than I expected. The delivery, however, was no mark of greatness. In the film’s commentary, Lucas says that the foreign feel of the film was exactly what he was striving for. He wanted to “make a film from the future, not about the future” which is a noble aim. The trouble is, to me, that this this and other aspects of the film are supposedly intended but not communicated, which makes me doubt the effectiveness of the method. While I do believe that the filmmaker owes only to himself, not an audience, the film medium is intended for communication. Otherwise, why not just shoot a movie and watch it in your basement. Godard often said that the mark of quality in a film is in the inability of an audience to comprehend it, something that I find monumentally foolish. If you release it, you obviously want others to see it. And, in releasing, if your only intention is to make others feel idiotic because they don’t get something you never intended them to get, than what’s the point? It is my opinion that we produce work as a form of giving to others, a concept or an idea or an emotion. You don’t have to spoon feed it to the audience, but it needs to be out there.
My apologies, got a tad side tracked.
I would venture that Lucas wanted to communicate his ideas to the audience, not be stingy about them, but was perhaps too young a filmmaker to know how to put them forward most affectively. Or, perhaps his style at that point is something that simply doesn’t stimulate me. My distaste is mainly in the fact that the two things I was most interested in, in the plot and world he created, were not played up as much as they could have been. First, there was an excellent criticism of both extremes of the political spectrum. In this underground world that THX inhabits, there is both the harsh conformity and invasiveness that characterizes far conservative regimes, especially now, but there are also references to China’s re-education, therefore serving to blur the lines of communism and fascism. Supplementing this, is the vast consumerism of the Nixon and approaching Reagan administrations, as well as the heavy drug use of the 1970s. Though the drugs in this case were not for recreation but by government mandate, a case can still be made for the criticism of people who use drugs as a wall between a true and manufactured reality. Though these elements are obviously present, and the backbone for the story, they are also in an odd way shoved to the side. I wanted to see more drugs, more consumerism, and instead they were mentioned frequently by detached voice overs and only seen once or twice. This is mildly comical coming from someone who at the time put not value on dialog and all on image.
Second, I wanted to see more in regards to the love story that spurred on the action of the film, between THX and LUH. This, I understand, is a complex issue as love stories are often want to be consumed in sap and this film was attempting to be as detached and cold as possible. Still, it’s something I want explored a little more. The entire point of the love affair was to raise these citizens out of their stupor and experience emotion as they never have before, yet we don’t get to see much of them doing so. The only way we know they aren’t on drugs is because they’re able to have sex, which can easily be done apathetic and doped up.
Though interesting, this would certainly not be a film I’d want to sit through a second time, or recommend to others. If it were another filmmaker, I would say it was a noble first effort on the road to greater things. Considering this is George Lucas though, I’d probably have to pin this as a sprawling, pretentious bit of nonsense made by a man not yet ready to sell out to something he’s better equipped for.
