The Zero Theorem

I can't help it, but Terry Gilliam is already plagiarizing himself. It's as if he attempted to make "Brazil" for the new millennium. The society is very similar, there is also Big Brother watching you, and everything is equally bizarre. It's a crazy satire, but this time I didn't get the feeling that the concept outweighed the execution. It's a shame because the actors here deliver incredible performances. (09/22/2014)

Terry Gilliam this time about the meaning of life in Matrix style. I think I identified all the storylines that I thought would disturb me and they really do, I laughed over the jabs at our society and I sighed over how sterile our lives are and our loss of privacy. It was just missing the usual Gilliam’s sting in the tail. Despite great acting work (Waltz didn’t disappoint me and the young Lucas Hedges is talented) the Zero Theorem just seems rather lifeless. Why am I alive? (09/05/2014)

Gilliam’s Theorem must equal 5*. But, in its current state, Gilliam’s Theorem equals 3.42782*. To achieve the missing 1.57218*, it would need less exhibitionism from the filmmaker during the gratuitous Orwell-style prolog and greater focus on “the story I want to tell and what to hold up the critically aware mirror to"; as it is, it touches on various problems of the present and also some of the most fundamental questions about space and everything, but there is far too little of it. (07/20/2014)

I have a problem with the main plot, where the protagonist has his base somewhere in the middle of a pseudo-church, where he plays Tetris and calls it an activity suitable for the situation. On the other hand, I immediately understood that this is classic Terry Gilliam. Psychedelic as hell, totally abstract and at times wannabe philosophical – and I must say I didn’t find much logic in the whole thing. The result was that after almost two hours I was pretty pissed about having wasted my time on a movie that I’d been pretty much looking forward to. But with Gillian, you have to expect the unexpected, including a failure that some people won’t like. I didn’t like this one. (10/29/2014)