Susan Granger’s review of “The Zero Theorem” (Amplify)
According to filmmaker Terry Gilliam, this sci-fi fantasy completes the dystopian trilogy that began with “Brazil” (1985), followed by “Twelve Monkeys” (1995). This installment is set in London in an unspecified future when corporate computers run everyone’s lives.
Reclusive Qohen (Christoph Waltz) crunches “entities” for Mancom, a technology company. A diligent yet depressed neurotic who refers to himself as “we,” he dislikes toiling in an office. Instead, he’d rather stay in the cluttered, burnt-out, baroque church he calls home, much to the chagrin of his supervisor (David Thewlis). Management (Matt Damon) cryptically agrees to allow Qohen (pronounced “koen”) to work wherever he wants – under one condition: that he will solve an arcane mathematical formula called the Zero Theorem. It postulates that everything adds up to nothing – but zero must equal 100%.
Perpetually waiting for a phone call from a higher power that will explain the meaning of life, Qohen’s endeavors are interrupted by a digital psychiatrist (Tilda Swinton), a seductive coquette (Melanie Thierry), Management’s nerdy son (Lucas Hedges), and two henchmen known as the Clones (Emil Hostina, Pavlic Nemes). While Swedish actress Tilda Swinton recycles the same buckteeth she wore in “Snowpiercer” (2013), Melanie Thierry seems to be channeling Madonna’s various phases and outfits. Matt Damon is given the most innovative costumes; wherever he appears, his suits match the curtains, wallpaper and furniture, seamlessly blending him into the environment.
Septuagenarian Terry Gilliam is a former Monty Python animator who is obviously obsessed with dazzling imagery. Collaborating with screenwriter Pat Rushin, this plot borrows elements from “Waiting for Godot,” “Blade Runner,” the “book of Ecclesiastes” and the existential literary meanderings of Franz Kafka. Gilliam purportedly created this visual extravaganza on an $8.5 million budget by filming in Bucharest, which, he said, was the cheapest place he could work that had a good crew – and where costume designer Carlo Poggioli could buy extraordinary, yet cut-rate, Chinese-made fabrics.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Zero Theorem” is a facetious, yet fanciful 4. Beneath its superficial complexity, it’s just Steampunk eye-candy.
