Robert Altman always felt that
you could only get the measure of a film if you see it at least twice. Terry
Gilliam’s cinema, intentionally or not, bares this out, since many of his
recent films have required more than one viewing in order to entirely make
sense of them. Tideland, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus and
now The Zero Theorem are all somewhat difficult works, the former two
becoming easier after more than one viewing. Alas, for The Zero Theorem,
I’ll have to make do.
Set in the near future – more a
utopia than a dystopia, as Gilliam has called it, though presumably only for
certain people – Qohen Leth (Christoph Waltz) leaves his home, a disused
church, and goes to work. He is an ‘entity-cruncher’, which is a job that seems
to combine complex mathematical theory with pedalling. He wants to work from
home as he is waiting on a phone call that may explain to him the meaning of
his existence. He has been waiting on this phone call for years. Management
(Matt Damon) decides to allow him to work from home but on the condition that
he works on the Zero Theorem, a theorem that might just prove the ultimate
meaninglessness of existence. He is overseen by his supervisor (David Thewlis)
and helped by Bainsley (Mélanie Thierry) and Management’s son, Bob (Lucas
Hedges).
If you didn’t know this was a
Terry Gilliam film going in, you would be certain of it before the end. The
script, written by Pat Rushin, is imbued with Gilliam references. Christoph
Waltz looks like Bruce Willis in Twelve Monkeys; he is bewildered like
Jonathan Pryce in Brazil, while the fantasy worlds are from The
Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, albeit this time the result of technology
and not magic. As such, however, The Zero Theorem feels slightly dated.
The virtual reality suits recall The Matrix and some moments, meant to
represent the depressing future, are now a little too recognisable –
particularly the party scenes in which everyone dances to their own iPod, which
actually exist in the form of headphone discos. In a way, The Zero Theorem feels
like a film behind the times, a film Gilliam made over ten years ago and didn’t
release until now.
The film has big themes about the
meaning of life and the possibility or impossibility of proving that all is for
nothing and it is not without interest here. Gilliam has dealt with big themes
before but he has never seriously engaged with these questions – certainly not
in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. There are few interesting ideas
about life being a horrible mistake and death being the ultimate entity, the
idea that faith allows people to waste their lives waiting for death, that it
is much better to come to terms with the finality of a meaningless existence so
that the business of living can be engaged in properly – which is presumably what
the slightly opaque ending represents. These ideas come to fruition late in the
film, where the entire film is reassessed – and thus requiring a second
viewing. The Zero Theorem may just be Gilliam’s most intentionally
symbolic film, since the plot here of ‘entity-crunching’ is not important and
the film is ultimately just about how we spend and cope with our lives. Leth
moves from depression, to madness, to romantic fervour, to disappointment, to
anger, to a strangely therapeutic acceptance – somewhat similar to the
Kübler-Ross model of the five stages of grief. This becomes more apparent as
the film goes along, and this is ultimately what is problematic with the film.
Terry Gilliam has always worked
best with a degree of chaos, and even his best films have their messy elements,
often very successfully integrated into the film as a whole. This ramshackle
nature, however, has become more and more apparent in his later work as ideas
come thick and fast and never seem to hang together exactly right. Seeing a new
Gilliam film for the first time can be a bewildering and disappointing
experience and there is always the impression that something has been missed.
In a sense, Gilliam does not structure his films well, they move at a great
pace but only in the sense of a runaway train. Often the later films can be
scattershot and hit-and-miss, as interesting and comprehensible as they are
bland and confusing – an interesting idea followed by a fairly terrible gag
about a cigarette accidentally placed in a hat. The Zero Theorem feels
like Gilliam’s least focussed and most badly made film, an impression not
particularly helped by his trademark sets and camera movements (the camera
always looks like it is about to topple over) and some bad dialogue from
Rushin. And yet, a second viewing, and a third and fourth, allowed Tideland and
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus to reveal their truer nature, and
both came to make more sense, and so, to a degree, writing about The Zero
Theorem after one viewing may just be a self-defeating exercise.
What is ultimately laudable about Gilliam’s work is
his commitment to challenging the audience and to never make a comforting, easy
film. Appreciating these later works requires patience, commitment, effort,
concentration and, maybe most importantly, time. And often even messy Gilliam
can be more interesting and enjoyable than conventional Hollywood cinema. The
overall effect of The Zero Theorem is the feeling that something out of
the ordinary has just been seen and that it might require some work, and
possibly a liberal dose of one’s own creativity, to satisfactorily decode, but
that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
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