The problem with Lucas's story, though, is that after the first thirty minutes or so he rather runs out of story.
We've seen the initials "THX" often enough, at the beginning of movies to indicate they've been mastered to high standards of performance and on playback equipment that meets those standards. It's just one more branch of the multizillion-dollar Lucas empire that includes movie production, sound production, special effects, you name it. "THX 1138" is where it all started.
"THX 1138," released in 1971, is the first full-length motion picture George Lucas ever made, following several short films and a couple of brief documentaries. "THX 1138," cowritten, edited, and directed by Lucas, was based on a student film he made a year or so earlier with the more cumbersome title, "Electronic Labyrinth THX 1138 4EB," which in turn was based on a short sketch. It was Francis Ford Coppola, seeing promise in the lad, who encouraged Lucas to expand his idea; and with the modest backing of Warner Bros. and executive produced by Coppola and his American Zoetrope company, Lucas did just that. The result, while hardly a world-beating movie, is worth a look, if only for its atmosphere and, well, its look.
One notices early on that any number of previous books and movies must have influenced the young filmmaker. Stanley Kubrick's "2001" is seen in the stark interiors, the sparse dialogue, and the almost purely visual style of "THX." Then, George Orwell's "1984," Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World," and Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451" are seen in Lucas's bleak vision of the future.
Lucas is quick to point out in his accompanying audio commentary, however, that he wasn't really trying to expound upon the future at all in "THX" but was creating a parable about the way people behaved in 1970, when the film was made. Of course, that's exactly what Orwell, Huxley, and Bradbury were doing, too, parabolically observing their own societies. All of these writers were commenting on their own day, which provides us in the present with some interesting history lessons as well as sociological documents. None of these writers were trying to predict the future; they were criticizing their own present, now, ironically, our past. In any case, it's a credit to the genius of all of them that their observations about the way people behaved back then were so prescient and are as meaningful as ever today.
The problem with Lucas's story, though, is that after the first thirty minutes or so he rather runs out of story. His tale is set in some undefined future world where the government controls everybody's lives; where the equivalent of Big Brother watches people's every move; where a monetary value is placed on everyone and everything; and where not taking drugs is a crime. Their "normal" is our abnormal and vice versa. As I said, it's Orwell, Huxley, and Bradbury.
Everyone is lettered and numbered, and the main character's designation is THX (pronounced "Thex") 1138. He's played by Robert Duvall, shaved bald like everyone in the film and like everyone dressed entirely in white. It's a cold, calculating, sterile world Lucas portrays, which is implied to represent the conformity, regimentation, and consumerism of the present age. Most people are automatons, says Lucas, going through life uncaring and unseeing, shopping 'til we drop but never getting anything in return. Sounds a little like what Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson were saying about their society a hundred and fifty years ago, too.
"Be efficient. Work hard. Increase production. Prevent accidents. Buy. And be happy." These are the government's watchwords, along with other such gibberish. But the people hear the lies so often, they believe them. They live them. And their religion is based on huge photographs of a Christlike face to whom they are encouraged to confess their sins and the sins of others.
Because he'd obviously been influenced by "2001" and he recognized the value of minimalism, Lucas uses virtually no dialogue in his film and extremely sparse sets, white walls and concrete tunnels and hallways, for a totally antiseptic feel. In the first half of the film, THX falls in love with his roommate, LUH 3417 (Maggie McOmie), something that would not normally happen if they took their medications like everyone else; but they don't. They want to live and breathe and feel. Unfortunately, it's illegal. Love and sex and emotions are forbidden. By the second half of the film, THX meets several more like-minded individuals, SEN 5241 (Donald Pleasence), a corrupt official who wants to be THX's roommate, and SRT (Don Pedro Calley), a hologram who wants to be human. After LUH's disappearance, they attempt to escape together to the outer world.
The concern I have with much of this, besides its having been done before, is that it's all rather slow and tedious. The pace seems to be at a standstill most of the time, which for "2001" was fine because the music and visuals were so spectacular; but here the moody music of Lalo Schifrin and the bare-bones set designs of Michael Haller are so laid back that after our first few minutes of delight, they're practically sleep inducing. The final chase sequence is just as aseptic and just as somber as everything that goes before it, meaning that despite the racing cars used and the high speeds involved, it's never very exciting, nor was it probably meant to be.
Symbolism runs rampant in the film, and one can make of the symbols almost anything one chooses. But the symbolism is pretty much spent by the first half hour. Worse, however, is that most of the film's material reads like black comedy, dark satire, yet Lucas shows no trace of humor in the proceedings. It's all done in deadly earnest, which may, in fact, be part of the fun, I don't know. It's hard to tell if Lucas is joking when he has robotic policemen running aimlessly into solid walls or people filing mindlessly into elevators that go nowhere. It's all presented in so serious a manner, there is practically no trace of tongue-in-cheek about it.
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