Equilibrium

Equilibrium is a science fiction action film written and directed by Kurt Wimmer. It stars Christian Bale as Cleric John Preston, a warrior-priest and enforcement officer in a future dystopia where both feelings and any creative expression are outlawed and citizens take daily injections of drugs to suppress their emotions. After accidentally missing a dose, Preston begins to experience emotions which make him question his own morality and moderate his actions, while attempting to remain undetected by the suspicious society in which he lives. Ultimately he aids a resistance movement using “Gun-Kata”, which he was taught serving the very regime he is to help overthrow.

CLERIC PRESTON

Preston begins the film as a ruthless “Cleric”, whose job is to destroy any evidence of human emotion and dispose of “sense offenders”. He is the most talented Cleric of Libria; brutally efficient at his job and the art of Gun-Kata. When he stops taking the emotion-suppressant Prozium, he realizes the horror of what he has been committing and joins the underground revolution to overthrow Father.

Preston has two main outfits; his black Cleric military-style frock coat with black trousers and boots, and his white ceremonial outfit with katana. The black of his original outfit is symbolic of his allegiance to the totalitarian government, as well has his violence, lack of morality and absence of emotion. At the climax of the film he changes into his white suit, representing his status as a freedom fighter, the saviour of the revolution, and a man who has fully embraced and harnessed his emotions.

Preston works well as a protagonist; he initially gains the favour of the audience through his impressive physical skills with the firearm based martial art Gun-Kata, although it is difficult for viewers to sympathise with his initial stoic and brutal character, especially when he is shown burning the Mona Lisa and shooting his partner for reading poetry. The whole narrative of the film is about the beauty of emotion, and it is Preston’s emotional journey that endears him to the viewers; as he grieves for his wife, expresses guilt over the death of his partner and falls in love with a convicted Sense Offender – as he becomes truly human - the audience understand and recognise his emotions as what they have experienced themselves, entirely sympathising with the cause of the emotionally liberated revolutionaries that he joins.

Preston is highly intelligent and highly competent physically, with incredibly strong loyalties. He is played by Christian Bale, who is attractive, but not enough to make him significantly stand out from a crowd of average people, although he does have a powerful presence. These are all aspects we want to incorporate into our protagonist.

FATHER/ DUPONTE

“Father” is the name of the all-controlling, supposedly benevolent, dictator of Libria, the equivalent of ‘Big Brother’. He is a God-like figure, whose orders are never questioned or disobeyed, no matter how contradictory. He appears in video clips shown all over Libria, giving lectures on history, politics and the benefits of a society under the influence of Prozium, and constantly updates a list of banned, “EC-10” contraband substances that give evidence to human emotion. It is Duponte’s job to receive and interpret Father’s commands, however, it is revealed that Father died many years ago, and Duponte has simply taken his place and taken command himself. Duponte is a politician who does not take Prozium, and actively collects and hoards art. He is a power-hungry hypocrite who intended to provoke Preston into experiencing emotion, hoping to use him as a pawn to lead him to the leaders of the revolution.   

LOVE INTEREST – MARY O’BRIEN

                                     

Mary O’Brien is a “sense offender” caught by Preston recently after he stops taking his Prozium. Her long dark hair and her deep red dress signify that she is a wild character, and her minimal makeup emphasizes her natural beauty, provoking Preston’s newly awakened emotions. Her hair and makeup are also reminiscent of Viviana Preston, Preston’s wife. Flashbacks reveal the quiet intensity of his relationship with his Viviana, whom he protected instinctively but did not understand, and his relationship with Mary is used to show how far he has come in his emotional journey. Mary goes through the same trial and imprisonment as Viviana did, and at each step, flashbacks and security footage are used to juxtapose his previous lack of emotion to his newly discovered passions. It is watching the footage of Viviana’s execution, and the grief he finally experiences through it, that prompt him to try and save Mary. His helplessness to stop her fate is what triggers the last few barriers holding his emotions back to disappear.

MARY O'BRIEN

   

VIVIANA PRESTON

SPEECHMAKING IN EQUILIBRIUM

“Libria, I congratulate you. At last peace reigns in the heart of man. At last war is but a word whose meaning fades from our understanding. At last, we are whole. Librians, there is a disease in the heart of man. Its symptom is hate. Its symptom is anger. Its symptom is rage. Its symptom is war. The disease is human emotion. But Libria, I congratulate you, for there is a cure for this disease. At the cost of the dizzying highs of human emotion, we have suppressed its abysmal lows. And you, as a society, have embraced this cure: Prozium. Now we are at peace with ourselves and human kind is one. War is gone. Hate, a memory. We are our own conscience now, and it is this conscience that guides us to rate EC-10, for emotional content, all those things that might tempt us to feel, again, and destroy them. Librians, you have won. Against all odds, and your own natures. You, have, survived.”

Father uses the same kind of subtle indoctrination technique that we want to use in our trailer; emphasising that the government is working on behalf of the people, focusing on the positive and addressing the audience directly.

LIBRIA

Libria is a dystopian society, controlled by Father by the emotion-suppressing drug Prozium. It has many parallels to Nazi Germany – it was filmed mainly in Eastern Germany, because of the unique combination of fascist and modern architecture built specifically "to make the individual feel small and insignificant so the government seems more powerful" – such as the ruthless army of elite soldiers (the Cleric vs the SA) recruited specifically to protect the government and strike fear in the rebels, the emphasis on family units, the single un-questionable leader and the insistence of utopia amidst the horrifying reality of totalitarianism.

The Librian flag is a modified swastika, and appears frequently throughout the film, for example, the shape of the loudspeakers, and the shape of Preston's muzzle flashes when he shoots.

ICONIC IMAGES OF THE PROTAGONIST

One of the most memorable parts of the film is Christian Bale performing "gun-kata". This fan-made image highlights the different martial-arts positions used and the dramatic effect that blue light produces.

The most iconic image of the protagonist is his A-frame stance sillhouette, seen near the beginning of the film. This sets him up as a dangerous and capable character, an image we want to recreate for our protagonist. 

Equilibrium Teaser Trailer Deconstruction

Link to the trailer on IMDB

The trailer begins with the anchorage from the company who made it - Dimension Home Video. They are well known, but not as famous as companies such as Warner Bros or Universal, so it is an idication that this will be more of a "cult" film, with a selective following, rather than a big box-office hit.

The trailer begins with a synthesized humming and a sound like the clash of metal as the anchorage wipes onto the screen, on a black background. Already, this gives a futuristic sense to the trailer. An overhead shot of Cleric Preston appears; he is in a martial-arts pose, dressed entirely in black and under a spotlight. This turns into a fast tilt shot, slows, and finishes as a low angle shot, a close up on Christian Bale’s face before he looks up. There is non-diegetic violin music behind a voiceover talking about the Cleric as “the final line of defence”, coinciding with Bale lifting his head, indicating that he is a member of the Cleric and introducing him as the protagonist.

There is a close up on his gloved hands and his black military style coat, as he removes his guns from his holsters, which then zooms out and tracks him sideways as he runs along a corridor between two lines of helmeted men into a pitch black room. For a split second there is the iconic image of him standing in an A-frame stance, guns at his sides, silhouetted by the light behind him from the corridor. These clips set the protagonist up to be highly physically competent and a trained combatant, the peaking violin music highlighting how dangerous he is.

 There is a non-diegetic synthesized beat over several fast-cut clips, including a long shot of rows of black-clad men practising martial arts in a temple, a window being smashed and a mid-shot of people in grey walking past a child stood on a pedestal. The shots are cut with white flashes between them and in time to the synthesized beat. These images suggest the idea of control by force and fear, and a lack of individuality, are key to this futuristic civilisation. The shot with the martial arts is particularly effective because the men all move exactly in time, which makes them look like like cogs, or a clock, all turning in a windmill motion in time with the non-diegetic music.

The long shot of the rows of grey-clad men and women all sitting on benches works really well, because it implies great numbers, all similar, without actually showing many people. It also continues to cement the previously introduced idea of individuality and creative thought being destroyed. The shot before shows that they are watching a video of Father giving a speech, which is an idea that we are using in our own teaser trailer. 

The climax of the trailer is a sequence of fast-cut action shots, which show the protagonist demonstrating his prowess with both guns and a katana. Left: a mid shot of the protagonist sweeping his katana from its hilt is made incredibly effective by the introduction of sinister choral music, which he moves in time with, and this gives the shot greater power by emphasizing how dangerous the protagonist is. Right: an extreme close up of the protagonist shooting his gun, and the camera follows the empty clip as it falls. This is preceeded by multiple fast-cut action shots of the protagonist flipping through the air and firing in different directions, which gives the clip greater emphasis, as it is a relatively slow cut in comparison, and an extreme close up, compared to the previous mid-shots.

The trailer features many close-up shots of the protagonist's face, because emotion is such an integral part of the plot, and because Christian Bale is a very famous and easily recognisable actor, so they act as a draw. This close up works really well because, like the gun shot before, it is preceeded by lots of fast-cut shots of the protagonist performing impressive physical feats in mid-shots and long-shots. The shot lasts for a fraction of a second, but is very effective because of the protagonist's completely composed face, which shows the extent of his capabilities, as he has fought off all of the foes shown, but has not even changed his facial expression.

The final cut has the title appear in the same futuristic font as the poster in white, with a black background, again suggesting the ideas of good versus evil, and the cold emotionless nature of the dystopian future. Behind the title, "Equilibrium" scrolls across the background in giant grey font, reinstating the futuristic quality of the film.

Equilibrium Poster Deconstruction

The first striking thing about the poster is that it is monochrome, reflecting the cold, emotionless society of Libria under Prozium. Having the stark contrast between the black and white also conveys the struggle between good and evil – rebellion and dictatorship – that is the climax of the film.

At the top of the poster are the names of the actors, in white capitals, in a futuristic-style font. The focus of the poster is the two figures, Christian Bale and Taye Diggs, whose poses are identical, again reflecting the lack of identity in the society of Libria. They both wear the military-style frock coats of the Clerics, are holding guns, and are standing in an A-frame aggressive stance, as if ready to fight. The contrast is turned up on their faces, leaving dark shadows for their eyes and highlighting their emotionless expressions.

Between them is the film tagline, written in the same futuristic font as the actor names, but in black, to stand out against the background of a grey city with white fireworks. The focus on the image of the actors suggests that the focus of the film is on the development of the characters, and having the city between them implies that they are both loyal to the city, but on different sides. The title is at the bottom in white in the futuristic font, followed by the credits and the release date.