Equilibrium is
an action movie that is in a futuristic world after the Third World
War. After the war, the world was governed by a totalitarian ruler 'The Father.' All the citizens were forced to take a
pill called 'Prozium' everyday that numbed their emotions to create a
world of utopia. John Preston, the head of a group or a high ranking
general responsible of destroying the resistance. One day, he doesn't
take the pill realizing the beauty of emotion.
The movie
portrays human being as nothing, but a mindless robot repeating their
daily lives over and over again. Since nobody in the movie had
emotions, everybody wore the same type of clothes and walked around
with an apathetic face, almost as if everybody was a machine in a car factory. This showed the nature of evil empire where one man
had control over everything. Which also portrayed how selfish a human
being can be. A human without emotion is improbable because as
the speaker Lee Hardy said on Monday that “humans are pleasure driven.” Another
aspect about humans that showed in the movie was that people accept the rules they are given by their authorities, which led the citizens to forget how much emotions
affected their lives. In the other hand the resistance, who were the people
who rebelled against the government not taking the daily pills kept hope and fought back.
Another thing
that shows from the movie is that a kingdom is not a place but it's
an on going process how, the kingdom of the movie, Equilibrium there
were still many changes happening and how there were full of surprises
in it. You would have never expected that the head of a group or a
high ranking general of destroying the resistance would ever be the one to go against what he
lived most of his life for.
It is crucial
that we live in a world of liberty and it is also important that we
realize how much of a blessing and privilege we have to live in such
a place. There are still countries around the world that are
suffering in a one governed society just like how the movie showed.
Discussion
Questions
- Are we brave enough to go against what our world believes and stand up for what we think is right?
- Can we ever reach a world of utopia?
Thanks for sharing about this film, John. It seems to have a lot of themes that resonate with our class. Dystopic films about the future, like this one, are almost always commenting on contemporary society in some way. Like the Matrix, this film asks us to question what is controlling us today--in U.S. society, as well as countries around the world who are more literally under totalitarian control. In particular, it seems like this film asks us to consider what has a hold on our imaginations as Christians living in North America. We'll dig more deeply into that question with the next few chapters of Colossians Remixed!
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