Screenplay Written by Pat Rushin
Directed by Terry Gilliam
**** (four stars)
RATED R
"Nothing is real."
-The Beatles
"Nothing is Everything. Everything is Nothing."
-The Who
In many ways, it truly amazes me that a filmmaker of Terry Gilliam's stature, creativity, and longevity is not more openly celebrated and revered than he is. But in other ways, I can completely understand it.
Terry Gilliam, forever associated with his tenure within the brilliantly iconic absurdist comedy troupe Monty Python's Flying Circus, has long existed as one of our most blatantly idiosyncratic filmmakers, crafting one deliriously demented yet often divine work of visionary art after another and another. To that end, his career has indeed been plagued with more than his fair share of disappointments, turbulence and trauma, some of which have derailed projects altogether, soiled his relationships within the Hollywood studio system time and again and earned him a reputation as either cinema's madman genius or enfant terrible, depending upon whom you would ask.
As for me, ever since the age of 12 when I saw the surrealistic fantasy film "Time Bandits" (1981), I have remained steadfast with my allegiance to his joyously askew and often darkly disturbing vision of life, the universe and everything...and that even includes remaining faithful after enduring the turgid and repugnant cinematic atom bomb known as "Tideland" (2005).
That being said, it has troubled me over the years, as the movie industry has changed, seemingly leaving idiosyncratic filmmakers like Gilliam behind for more impersonal, commercial sequels, prequels, remakes, re-boots and re-imaginings, that a filmmaker of Terry Gilliam's legacy and overall excellence is increasingly having difficulty getting films made and even released. His latest film, the grim existential odyssey entitled "The Zero Theorem," was barely released theatrically in the United States and never arrived in my city at all, making it quite possibly one of Gilliam most underseen and possibly unknown films.
As far as I am concerned, that is a complete shame as "The Zero Theorem" finds Terry Gilliam operating at the top of his game, delivering one of his finest, and most tragically haunting films to date. If you have ever found yourself swept up and away by a Terry Gilliam film, from the likes of "Brazil" (1985), "The Fisher King" (1991) or "12 Monkeys" (1995), or are just in the avenue to see a film experience unlike anything else playing in your local theaters and multi-plexes, rent the Blu-Ray or DVD or find a way to stream "The Zero Theorem" as soon as conceivably possible.
"The Zero Theorem," set within an indeterminate future society, stars Christoph Waltz as Qohen Leth, an eccentric and anti-social computer programmer and mathematician, who is convinced that he is dying and is feverishly seeking the meaning to his existence, which he believes will arrive via telephone call. Qohen, employed by the conglomerate known as Mancom and assigned to "crunch entities," desperately attempts to arrange to perform his duties from his home due to his perceived illness. Although company doctors proclaim that Qohan is physically healthy, he is instructed to receive therapy from the AI psychiatrist Dr. Shrink-ROM (Tilda Swinton) for continuous evaluation.
At a party held by his supervisor Joby (an excellent David Thewlis), at which Qohan reluctantly attends, he meets two individuals that will drastically alter the course of his life. First, Qohan is introduced to the comely, curvaceous and vivacious Bainsley (Melanie Thierry), who instantly attracts his eye and spirit against his judgement and solitary nature. Secondly, there is the figure known only as "Management" (sharply played by Matt Damon in a cameo performance), who grants Qohan's request to exclusively work at home but solely on a special project.
After being shown the super-computer known as the "Neural Net Mancive," a machine that has stored all of the "crunched" entities, Qohan is instructed to order all of the data to solve the Zero Theorem, a mathematical formula designed to determine the meaning or meaninglessness of existence.
While endlessly working upon the formula, receiving his therapy sessions, living in isolation for the better part of one year and still waiting for his hopefully life illuminating phone call, Qohan finds his sense of reality challenged, questioned and within the serious threat of being unraveled entirely. Philosophical and existential conundrums pile upon themselves, questions remain unanswered yet lead to more questions and then, there is the presence of a real or imagined swirling black hole beckoning to Qohan menacingly.
Terry Gilliam's "The Zero Theorem" is a darkly kaleidoscopic odyssey into the heart of existential angst that is as beautifully realized as any film within Gilliam's oeuvre. Working again with his longtime collaborator, Cinematographer Nicola Pecorini, Gilliam weaves a lavish, lushly visual palate that remains a feast for the eyes yet his landscape is filled with all manner of canted angels, designed to once again suggest the topsy-turvy sense of alignment, or lack thereof, that precariously exists within the society, the philosophy and the internal state of the film's characters.
The first third or so of "The Zero Theorem" is quite possibly Gilliam's most visually cacophonous film, no small feat for a filmmaker who has made a career out of his visual extravaganzas. Yet this time around, the excess effectively creates the disturbing effect of a world disastrously overrun with imagery, lights, sound and also one where advertisements literally follow you walking through the streets of an over-populated, sensory overloaded city environment. The effect is as dazzling as it is exhausting.
Once Qohen ventures into his seclusion, the film grows more intimate and insular as it essentially bunkers down inside of his home, which is a bombed out, dilapidated former monastery filled with items both archaic (that ringing telephone) and futuristic (virtual reality suits and all manner of computers), and where all of the imagery clashes together to such a degree that everything feels messy and meaningless. We have seen this technique before in portions of Director Alfonso Cuaron's "Children Of Men" (2006) but never to this impressive and immersive of a degree. Perhaps in this more than any other Gilliam film have I wished to freeze frame sections just to study every little detail he and his expert team have literally crammed into every single frame.
Even so, let me assure you that the visual overkill is indeed purposeful and not meant to bludgeon and numb you into submission. The visuals fully enhance the film's internal landscape. While the actual plot description may make "The Zero Theorem" sound like self-congratulatory gobbledy-gook, please again allow me to assure you that Gilliam has crafted a deeply stirring, multi-layered experience where the considerably weighty pathos will indeed rattle your spiritual cages. Not only has Gilliam utilized this film to serve as a worthy successor to both "Brazil" and "12 Monkeys," therefore creating a conceptual sub-trilogy within his complete filmography, "The Zero Theorem" essentially feels to exist as Terry Gilliam's dystopian science fiction version of Playwright Samuel Beckett's "Waiting For Godot."
"The Zero Theorem" beautifully works as a tangible, achingly heartfelt and teeth baring cultural critique, as faceless conglomerates continue their stranglehold, the reality of existing under constant surveillance is ever mounting and how our over-reliance upon technology and social media has heavily contributed to our collective spiritual decay in regards to our mounting sense of anxiety and alienation. But mostly, I felt the film to work strongest as a spiritual allegory filtered through the disturbing lens of tragic comedy, and believe me, it is a descent into palpable anguish, disillusionment and madness.
With a mad physicality and the personal tick of always referring himself in the plural, Christoph Waltz elicits a pitch perfect performance as the misanthropic Qohen Leth confidently and completely inserting himself into Gilliam's dark cinematic universe as he creates a character that is indeed cut from the same cloths as Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) from "Brazil" and James Cole (Bruce Willis) from "12 Monkeys." Like those characters, Qohan Leth suffers from the same affliction with feeling, and being, figuratively or literally displaced in a world that he can no longer recognize...that is if he ever did.
Where Sam felt more at home within his fantasy world where he existed as a winged warrior and James Cole felt his life needed to be lived in pre-apocalyptic 1996 as opposed to the post-apocalyptic 2027, Qohen Leth retreats to his home, yet never finds any sense of comfort or tranquility. It is only in the virtual reality world (itself a dangerous distraction of isolation, Gilliam may be arguing) of a warm beach by the ocean graced by a golden sun that never sets and where Qohan live his days with Bainsley, the woman of his dreams (again like Sam Lowry and James Cole), does Qohan find some sense of peacefulness. In some ways, "The Zero Theorem" possesses the feel of an elderly man taking stock of a world that quite possibly is no longer understandable, perhaps much like Terry Gilliam himself to an extent.
Or what if, instead of an elderly man, we are dealing with the interior state of a dying man?
The Quixotian (or better yet, Sissyphean) atmosphere of "The Zero Theroem" cannot even begin to be understated, for what could be more of a seemingly unwinnable uphill siege than attempting to understand what cannot ever be understood. Just take Qohan's work assignment of decoding the Zero Theorem itself. There he sits day and night and all over again, madly staring into a computer screen and grasping wireless controls, moving digital boxes containing excerpts of mathematical formulas around and around like some sort of TETRIS game. Once one formula is completed, another formula disintegrates, making a task that will absolutely, positively never be accomplished.
Even greater are Qohan's interactions with the very small collective of individuals who enter and exit his life, from the gregarious Joby, to Bob (played by Lucas Hedges), the teen aged, fast talking computer technician who is also Management's son to especially the erotically tinged Bainsley, who fully disarms Qohan, despite his best intentions to remain emotionally closed to everyone.
In fact, out of all of the film's highly exaggerated characters, it was the character of Bainsley that left me curious as she just never felt (aside from one tender, desperate scene late in the film) quite real to me. It seemed that she was more of an idea than fully three dimensional and again, I think that was purposeful for what if Bainsley is indeed just a perception, a vision of Qohan's romantic and sexual desire? And if she is not real, then she will always be unattainable. And that is when I truly felt that perhaps none of what I was watching was even possibly conceived to be "real" at all. What if all of the characters, his home and the landscape are all just representations of Qohan's personality and memories, spiraling around his mind in those final stages of life before...oh, well, whatever comes next, if anything?
Is Management essentially God (like the crisply suited Supreme Being in "Time Bandits")? Does Bob represent Qohan as a younger man and therefore, does Joby represent him during middle age? Is his home just an extension of the corners and corridors of his mind rapidly declining? And what if that black hole is essentially eternity and with that, what if the film itself are the thoughts of a man's final moments before departing this mortal coil, kind of like Writer/Director Charlie Kaufman's "Synecdoche, New York" (2008)? If anything, Terry Gilliam's 'The Zero Theorem" is indeed open to interpretation (or maybe not, and Gilliam is having a laugh over all of us trying to ascribe meaning to his film) and I do think that it is quite possible that what we may be experiencing throughout is not a literal story set within a literal, realistic landscape.
But again, there lies the conundrums, because nothing is real.
With all of the relationships he formulates in the film, poor Qohen is upended time and again throughout the film as every perception he holds is broken apart and every new realization is fraught with pain and sorrow. Just regard Christoph Waltz's eyes throughout the film and if you look closely, and beyond his brusque, cantankerous nature, you may occasionally see the dabs of tears welling at the edges, for he is a more sensitive soul than he is willing to reveal.
Is it all just pointless self-preservation to hold so tightly onto what cannot be grasped forever? Qohan's eternal quest for inter-personal and societal relevance plus feverishly trying to gain the meaning of life had only created his sense of existential misery isolation and displacement. Certainly, we all question our existence just as we are increasingly becoming non-existent, for that is indeed the human condition. But to what end to we question? Do we question at the expense of the lives that we have been given? Terry Gilliam's "The Zero Theorem" explores the concepts of the meaningful and the meaningless and what does indeed constitute a meaningful life so provocatively and artfully.
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Terry Gilliam's "The Zero Theorem" is a grim philosophical, psychological experience that is an impassioned meditation on the nature of existence itself. It is a film about isolation, displacement and the task of attaining a sense of meaning in an increasingly meaningless and chaotic universe ready to swallow us whole, like that nightmarish maw of a black hole that keeps tormenting Qohen Leth. It seems that somehow, someway, Terry Gilliam has escaped the pull of that black hole time and again, as he carries onwards, by hook or by crook, precisely making the films that he would indeed see himself and inviting us to join his specialized parade in the process.
Now in his 70's, I shudder to think with how much longer we may be able to have an artist of Terry Gilliam's disposition and talents still creating. At this time, we has two new and LONG gestating projects lined up, including the eternally troubled "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote," and to that, I send my very best wishes that his dreams can come to full fruition, and for our full benefit as well.
Long may he run and long may we embrace him, for when Terry Gilliam does indeed leave the material world, we, and the world of cinema itself, will have quite the large, black hole left in his wake. So, please do try and find some way to embrace him now with the excellence of "The Zero Theorem."
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