THX 1138 – Technological Labyrinth & GOD

JB Hi-Fi. I have spent a year here in Australia and I can tell you that the worst, most evil place for a half-broke student in the land down under is JB Hi-Fi. Just ask Joshua or Herbs (Brodie). Joshua gives me a really cheeky grin whenever we talk about it as we reminiscence of the time when we went on an uncontrollable DVD shopping rampage a few months back. Sigh

Anyways, i bought a few new DVDs.

One of them is THX 1138.

THX waaa? Its George Lucas’s visionary first film that started out as his final semester short film project back in the 1960s. A commercial flop and way ahead of its time, the film is now remastered, re-edited and squeezed into a glorious 2 DVD set Director’s Cut.

For those of you who know me well, I AM a movie fanatic. Growing up reading about the fabled THX 1138 and hearing tales of its almost mythical beauty, I nearly cried when I pressed the play button. Dramatization is necessary when one blogs. Marlon Brando’s flinching in his grave.

Anyways, I watched the movie twice in one sitting. Getting up only for a cup of water and for a 12-minute nose-dig break. THX 1138 is an amazing movie. With minimal dialogue, superb technicality, brilliant usage of colors (white) and understated acting driving the momentum of the film, it manages to tell a story of a haunting future that sees economics and technology replacing freedom and love. A brilliant, crisps essay on perfected community, fragmented humanity. Shades of Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ steadi-cam techniques, Fritz Lang’s ‘Metropolis’ silent picture stills and Orson Welles ‘Citizen Kane’ heavy symbolism are scattered throughout the movie.

Themes of a mechanized religion, where mechanized priest promoting commerce and instant solutions through mandatory pacifying drugs prescriptions make THX 1138’s future a chilling yet strangely relatable future. In conclusion, not only does THX 1138 live up to all the hype of being an intelligent artistic triumph but proves that George Lucas, is a ‘kow-kow’ genius.

As I prepare for Urban life this Tuesday, I can draw a parallel line to our journey with God and the movie. Being on this journey, we can either chose to be ‘mechanized’, to expect God to move in a way that we’ve been ‘programmed’ to expect OR we can choose not to be satisfied and break free from the box of thinking/limiting how God will move. The bible says in 1 Corinthians 2:9 ‘No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him’.

I believe and expect God to move in my life in a way I cannot comprehend. Do you?

Love,
Dugong