The Zero Theorem is very much a Terry Gilliam film. This is a good thing and a bad thing. If one isn’t familiar with his work, it is entirely possible that the film might be mind blowing. Like all of his work, it is a movie that features an incredible sense of design, and a compelling willingness to go beyond the boring confines of the norm. But taken into the context of the rest of his work, The Zero Theorem feels like the director just revisiting his greatest hits. But this time, the director applies all the same aesthetics to a story that he doesn’t seem to particularly care about.
The film takes in a dystopian future where corporations rule and advertisements are literally following people around. Qohen Leth (Christoph Waltz) works as a number cruncher for the mega-corporation ManCom. One day, he gets a call that promises to reveal to him the purpose of his life, but he accidentally drops the receiver before getting that secret. He petitions to work from home so that he may be on hand should the mysterious caller ring him up again. Management eventually allows him to do this, but in exchange, he is to work on proving an equation that has driven others mad.
The Zero Theorem feels a lot like Gilliam revisiting the ideas in Brazil. He constructs a world of corporate dominance, where humans are only valued as either consumers or workers. An entire system is built around systematic oppression, whether it be through rampant commercialism or corporate bureaucracy. This film, though much brighter and glossier, pretty much follows the same aesthetic. The addition of visual effects doesn’t actually help matters. It just makes the design feel busier and more artificial.
The core of the story is distinctly Gilliam: Qohen is a character that cannot deal with the anxieties with which reality presents him. And so he runs away into fantasy, in this film in the form of Bainsley (Melanie Thierry), a sex worker who uses virtual reality to take Qohen away from the madness of his existence. This ends up becoming the primary motivator of the story, which is a problem. Bainsley doesn’t feel like a whole character, and her choices in the end feel forced and illogical. What ought to have been an emotional encounter ends up feeling cold and unearned.
Given all that, there is still a lot of pleasure that can be derived from all of this. The film still often looks pretty great. The filmmaker’s unique brand of weirdness is always welcome in cinema, even when it feels like a retread. Christoph Waltz wrestles with a character that refuses to be liked, and the actor somehow manages to make an emotionless monotone feel almost warm and inviting. The movie takes away a lot of Waltz’s typical tools as an actor, but he rises to the occasion and provides an intriguing center to a terribly busy film.
At its heart, The Zero Theorem seems to be trying to prove that nothing really matters. It is the idea that everything adds up to nothing. Perhaps this is Gilliam expressing his angst over his career and the industry. He has an amazing filmography, and yet every film still feels like a struggle. And so he assembles his work together into a single film, going through the components that have brought him to this point in his life and career. And he produces a film that uses all of those elements, and he has it all add up to nothing. It’s still visually stunning, and it’s conceptually interesting, but there isn’t a whole lot to it.
My Rating:
