Patrocles
Member
in theaters on Friday and DVD on Sept. 14.
Has anyone seen THX 1138 recently? I think I will check it out when it hits Seattle or should I get a copy from the Library?
Interesting comments in the last paragraph about a path Lucas might have taken...
A George Lucas Far, Far Away
By DAVE KEHR
Published: September 5, 2004
IN 1971, a 27-year-old George Lucas released his first theatrical film, "THX 1138," a feature-length expansion of a 15-minute short that he'd made as a student at the University of Southern California. It may be set in a chilly, antiseptic future, but "THX" is a quintessentially paranoid reflection of the culture wars of its time, a tale of young rebels (with bald pates rather than long, hippie hair) defying an authoritarian state. Robert Duvall plays THX 1138, a worker in a robot factory who awakens to the forbidden joys of love and sex when his roommate, LUH 3417 (Maggie McOmie, in her first and only film), substitutes stimulants for the sedatives the state forces its citizens to take. Arrested for crimes of affection, THX is sent to a highly metaphorical prison without walls — a huge, echoing white space, from which THX and his fearful companion, SEN 5241 (Donald Pleasance) are determined to escape.
Though deeply in debt to Stanley Kubrick and George Orwell, "THX 1138" has elements of striking originality, particularly in the densely layered soundtrack assembled by Mr. Lucas and the editor Walter Murch (credited with "sound montage"). The overlapping dialogue is only one element in a concerto of buzzes, beeps and whirrs — imagistic sounds that expand the world of the film beyond the office-tower interiors and parking garages Mr. Lucas used as his locations.
"THX 1138" is opening in theaters on Friday and will be released on DVD on Sept. 14 in a digitally buffed and polished "director's cut." The new version, five minutes longer than the original release, includes several computer-generated enhancements (like a far more elaborate factory where THX works). Even in its sleek, reconfigured version, "THX" suggests the path that the protean Mr. Lucas might have taken, toward a subjective and subversive personal cinema. Instead, Mr. Lucas turned "THX" on its ear, and — six years and one "American Graffiti" later — delivered its polar opposite, the proudly traditional "Star Wars."
Has anyone seen THX 1138 recently? I think I will check it out when it hits Seattle or should I get a copy from the Library?
Interesting comments in the last paragraph about a path Lucas might have taken...
A George Lucas Far, Far Away
By DAVE KEHR
Published: September 5, 2004
IN 1971, a 27-year-old George Lucas released his first theatrical film, "THX 1138," a feature-length expansion of a 15-minute short that he'd made as a student at the University of Southern California. It may be set in a chilly, antiseptic future, but "THX" is a quintessentially paranoid reflection of the culture wars of its time, a tale of young rebels (with bald pates rather than long, hippie hair) defying an authoritarian state. Robert Duvall plays THX 1138, a worker in a robot factory who awakens to the forbidden joys of love and sex when his roommate, LUH 3417 (Maggie McOmie, in her first and only film), substitutes stimulants for the sedatives the state forces its citizens to take. Arrested for crimes of affection, THX is sent to a highly metaphorical prison without walls — a huge, echoing white space, from which THX and his fearful companion, SEN 5241 (Donald Pleasance) are determined to escape.
Though deeply in debt to Stanley Kubrick and George Orwell, "THX 1138" has elements of striking originality, particularly in the densely layered soundtrack assembled by Mr. Lucas and the editor Walter Murch (credited with "sound montage"). The overlapping dialogue is only one element in a concerto of buzzes, beeps and whirrs — imagistic sounds that expand the world of the film beyond the office-tower interiors and parking garages Mr. Lucas used as his locations.
"THX 1138" is opening in theaters on Friday and will be released on DVD on Sept. 14 in a digitally buffed and polished "director's cut." The new version, five minutes longer than the original release, includes several computer-generated enhancements (like a far more elaborate factory where THX works). Even in its sleek, reconfigured version, "THX" suggests the path that the protean Mr. Lucas might have taken, toward a subjective and subversive personal cinema. Instead, Mr. Lucas turned "THX" on its ear, and — six years and one "American Graffiti" later — delivered its polar opposite, the proudly traditional "Star Wars."