Like some cinematic cousin to his masterpiece, ‘Brazil’, Terry Gilliam’s THE ZERO THEOREM is set in an uber bureaucratic dystopia echoing Orwell, Kafka and Philip K. Dick.
Our protagonist, the emotionally damaged and the emotionally bereft Qohen Leth, is an eccentric and reclusive computer genius plagued with existential angst.
He lives in isolation in a burnt-out chapel, where he washes in a font and a headless Christ on a Crucifix hosts a surveillance camera. Here he waits for a phone call which he is convinced will provide him with answers he has long sought.
Qohen works on a mysterious project, delegated to him by Management, aimed at discovering the purpose of existence – or the lack thereof – once and for all. His overseer, Joby, is a martinet, rather like the character played by Ian Holm in ‘Brazil’. It is his insistence that Qohen attends a party of his that creates a catalyst in connecting the hermit to a wider world view.
After meeting the manager of Mancom, his conglomerate employer, Qohen’s solitary existence is indelibly disturbed by visits from the flirtatious Bainsley who hosts a virtual sex web site, Bob management’s IT wunderkind son, and an online shrink dispensing treatment couched in pop psychology.
Indirectly inspired by contemporary painter, Neo Rauch, the design of the film has a crammed retro feel, similar to the neon Ginza set of Blade Runner minus the neo noir. Public televisual screens adorn the streetscapes spruiking mostly Mancom products and services, including the Church of Batman.
Pat Rushin’s script intrigued director Terry Gilliam with the many pertinent questions raised in his funny, philosophic and touching tale. For example: What gives meaning to our lives, what brings us happiness? Can we ever find solitude in an increasingly connected, constricted world? Is that world under control or simply chaotic?
The wonderfully watchable Christoph Waltz plays the mad but non malevolent Qohen with his customary quotient of eloquence and quietude, the quintessential geek and homogenised hermit, sporting a chrome dome that must put him in contention for any rebooting of Blofeld in the Bond franchise.
As his object of desire, the cyber-sexpot Bainsley, Melanie Thierry exudes sexy playfulness and fetishist fantasy. Is she a pawn in a porn site for sore eyes or a player and purveyor of plastic pleasure?
And what of Matt Damon’s chameleon chairman of the board, bored with the chessboard manoeuvring of his minions manufacturing mundanity, mediocrity and meaninglessness. It may as well be a cheeseboard as he wheys in with whimsical projects dressed in camouflage suits that blend him into seats and curtain him in drapes.
What’s good for the drapes is good for a gander, as is Tilda Swinton’s dental as anything mental mentor. Likewise, David Thewlis as the clueless Joby, all clip board and pen push, a real nowhere, no know-how man .
Film maker Terry Gilliam has an interesting litany of films from failures to triumphs, yet all have been fabulous in their fulfilment or forfeit. THE ZERO THEOREM amounts to much more than the sum of its parts.