Equilibrium (2002)

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Equilibrium (2002) is a film that I highly recommend. Written and directed by Kurt Wimmer, it portrays a dystopian future. It stars Christian Bale, and also appearing are Taye Diggs, Emily Watson, Angus MacFedyen, with Sean Bean and Sean Pertwee. It was filmed mostly in Berlin and has the creepy feel of Nazi-era architecture.
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It is possible that Wimmer borrowed much of his vision for this flick from Orwell, Huxley, Bradbury, Fritz Lang, Rand, etc. But his championing of individualism against conformity is very powerful here and worth watching for its own virtues. I like the mood of this movie. And libertarians should like the overall story.
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Without giving spoilers, I will just say that 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 dangerous 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 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 (sort of like my image of an Objectivist Hell run by the ARI elite). The shuffling human masses remind me a lot of Fritz Lang’s great 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, books and music are destroyed immediately when discovered. There is no compromise. The primary enforcers of this totalitarian rule are the Grammaton Clerics, whose implacable dedication and extreme "gun kata" martial arts training makes them indomitable.
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I did notice one piece of artwork that was apparently allowed to be in the office of one of the top rulers (Angus MacFedyen). It was a statue of Atlas, crushed down under the oppressive weight of the world. Hmm. There is something familiar here. Will he shrug? This makes me wonder about Kurt Wimmer’s intellectual lineage.
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There is a underground resistance movement in this society, and they consider their best ally to be human nature. This would be the Lockean or Jeffersonian view of humanity. 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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-Zenwind.
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