Director: George Lucas
Cast: Robert Duvall, Donald Pleasance, Don Pedro Colley, Maggie McOmie
Have I Seen it Before: Yeah, a couple of times. Hell, I’ve owned it on DVD a couple of times, just like any cineaste of sufficient stuffiness.
Did I Like It: It’s a trip, to be sure.
It’s sort of fun to imagine what kind of filmmaker George Lucas might have become, had he enjoyed any measure of commercial success earlier than he did. This film feels like the kind of movie he has really wanted to make this whole time. He may be still be producing “tone-poems” like this in some fashion after his retirement from big-budget blockbuster, if his interviews post-Disney takeover of Lucasfilm are to be believed.
I can see why people didn’t like it when it was initially released. It is dour and aloof in a near-monolithic way. Lucas might have refined his film school sensibilities further had the studio system not so thoroughly kicked the crap out of him during the early goings. But, I got a lot of neat action figures over the years, so I guess that’s nice, too.
It should be mentioned that the ending of the film sticks with me long after the film is over. It’s the strongest, most coherent part of the film, and that’s no surprise as it is largely a remake of Lucas’ previous student Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB (1967). While the feature tries to go through the milieu of Orwell’s 1984, things take a turn when the almost happy-ish ending where THX (Duvall) escapes society, largely because the authorities don’t have the budget to keep chasing him. Something about that gives me hope. We’re all too expensive for tyranny to truly break us.
Anyway, it’s a strange film, and the Lucas we all came to know is almost undetectable in the movie. Could you imagine if George Lucas kept going along this path? Can you imagine what he might be working on now that he has totally divorced himself from the audience? It boggles the mind, or at least the mind’s eye. The mind’s ear might be able to keep up. His early films almost sound like radio plays.
*Unlike with the original Star Wars movies, I had to watch the final George Lucas directors cut, complete with additional CGI effects. The augments are clearly less obtrusive than they became in his other, more famous movies, but it would have been something to see the film in its original form.