by Christopher Chatterton

Created on: August 12, 2008

Emotion in Equilibrium:

The continual wars of the twentieth century and before have ravaged mankind to the point of destruction. The Third World War in the twenty-first century has all but obliterated mankind, and society, as we would know it no longer exists.

This bleak synopsis is the plot outline of 'Equilibrium' (2002) staring Christian Bale, Sean Pertwee, Taye Diggs, Emily Watson, Sean Bean and Angus MacFayden.

At the beginning of the movie we learn that a totalitarian government has gathered the remnants of the survivors of the war into an idealistic, supposedly utopian city called Libria. This ironically refers to liberty or having a liberal-like state, which the city has anything but.

With overtones of George Orwell's novel, '1984' (1984), and the movie of the same name, emotion is monitored and forcibly suppressed. In Equilibrium, emotion and man's inability to manage it, is blamed for all wars, with particular blame being attributed to literature and music. Literature and music represent free thought after all.

The dictatorship led by the sinister figure Father' played by Pertwee, uses a police force headed by the elite 'Grammaton Clerics' (of which Bale is an elite member), to enforce the law.
With similarities to Fahrenheit 451 (1966), all literature is banned, and if any is found the evidence is summarily destroyed, while the owner is given a mock trial and executed.

Emotion is a thing to be feared in this dystopian world then, and regular injections of a drug called 'Prozium' are mandatory for all citizens, in centres called Equilibrium buildings'.

The beginning of the film sees Bean's character (Bales Grammaton partner) reveal to Bale that he has been 'feeling' things, and he admits that he has kept a book for himself and deliberately not taken his Prozium. Bale is shocked and has no choice but to kill Bean when he refuses to hand over his gun.

Worryingly for Bale, the event plays on his mind, and uncharacteristically he keeps the book for himself instead of destroying it. Gradually Bale commits more acts of kindness, at one point refusing to kill a dog and inadvertently killing several policemen to protect it when they deem it an 'EC-10 Violation' or a source of emotional threat.

Emotion refuses to die in Bale, as his character and the repression of emotion awake him at night in vivid nightmares, in which he realises he let his wife die because she possessed EC-10 material. Bale begins to stockpile his Prozium and a chance meeting with Watson's character,

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