REVIEW: The Zero Theorem (2013, Dir. Terry Gilliam)

In his repurposed church, Qohen Leth (Christoph Waltz), a man with a self-diagnosed terminal illness waits for a phone call. As he waits, he attempts win the clandestine affections of Bainsley (Mélanie Thierry), a young French woman with a penchant for vinyl nurse outfits, and to solve meaning of life for the global corporation who employs him, at the request of Management himself (Matt Damon).

If The Zero Theorem sounds simple, it was - or it probably was before Terry Gilliam, cinema's most famous kook, got his hands on it.

I have long been a fan of Gilliam, and a supporter of films of his that many have derided. I have said in the past that any film that makes it to the screen with his name attached is something to be cherished, what with all the calamities that usually fall his productions. The Zero Theorem is the first such film that I'd grudgingly suggest people won't, and shouldn't, cherish. It is not that the film isn't representative of his work; it certainly is, perhaps to the point of being derivative (which once senses may be entirely deliberate); it is that it already feels dated. Its themes, its aesthetic and its treatment of women all feel outmoded - the latter most appallingly so, to the extent that I was tempted to dismiss the film out of hand.

Side by side comparison's with Gilliam's magnum opus, Brazil, are inevitable and they won't be kind. Where that film incisively reworked an Orwellian dystopia for the big screen, here the director makes a play for the theories of Huxley and he isn't anywhere near as successful. Enforced happiness, information onslaught and sexual fantasia should slot well into these modern days but Gilliam's imagination and the screenplay by Pat Rushin feel at odds. Neither hits the Information Age zeitgeist with the required force, and on the production's modest budget the end result looks a little too much like a two storey recreation of MySpace.

While I can't say that is isn't a thrill to see Gilliam's quirkiness back on the big screen, he has much more in him than this. The Zero Theorem is defined more by what it lacks (tension, depth, charisma, actual philosophical rumination) than what it contains, and what it does contain is not much more than a few decades worth of leftovers rehashed as cinematic bubble and squeak.

★★

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