THE NIGHTMARISH DYSTOPIAN CITES OF KURT WIMMER AND

PHILIP NOYCE 3

4. Discussion
4.1. A few details about the films Equilibrium and The Giver.
The action of the movie Equilibrium takes place in the future, following World War III. After
having witnessed the terrible consequences of the conflict, the leaders of the city-state of Libria
have come up with the theory that the cause of all the evil that happens in the world is human
feeling, manifested in resentment and violence. Thus, they have decided to achieve a state of
perpetual peace by getting rid of sentiments through the use of an injection called Prozium which
suppresses human emotion.
The central figure of the city-state is an omnipresent dictatorial ruler known as “the Father”,
while the totalitarian authority that regulates Libria is represented by “The Tetragrammaton
Council”, an obvious allusion to the four Hebrew letters designating the name of God. (Tóth,
2009: 143) These religious references (“the Father”, “Tetragrammaton”) imply that the president
of Libria and the government claim to act as substitutes for the divine.
The ones who enforce the abusive law of this oppressive authority are the Grammaton Clerics,
whose job is to kill all those who do not comply with the regime (the Sense Offenders) and to
destroy all the illegal materials (books, paintings, music, etc.) that may trigger emotion. There is
also a resistance movement, the "Underground", which seeks to eradicate the system.
The protagonist of the film is John Preston, the highest-ranking Grammaton Cleric, whose wife,
Viviane, was previously executed for feeling emotion, leaving him with two children. John is
very good at detecting Sense Offenders and at finding hidden places with prohibited objects.
Discovering that his partner at work is also a rebel, he shots him. However, shortly after killing
his own colleague, John accidentally breaks his vial of Prozium and begins to experience human
feeling. On a raid, he meets Mary O'Brien, whom he falls in love with, but she is incinerated later
in the movie for being a Sense Offender. Realizing that the regime he has so faithfully served
needs to be overthrown, John kills the representatives of the authority and destroys the command
center of the propaganda machine, thus starting a revolution.
The movie “The Giver” also introduces us to an urban setting where the inhabitants take a daily
injection in order to supress their emotions for the purpose of achieving “sameness”. The citizens
have lost their memories and the only member of the community who still possesses the wisdom
and the burden of the past is the Receiver of Memory (The Giver), who has the duty of passing
on his knowledge to the one who will replace him.
During a ceremony in the film, the next Receiver turns out to be Jonas, an 18-year-old boy. Jonas
trains with the Giver and starts learning about the history of humanity and about human
emotions. He stops taking his daily injections and begins to experience feelings. Seeing the
terrible consequences the society of “sameness” entails, the boy decides to help the citizens. The
only way to free the inhabitants from the terrible regime is for Jonas to escape past the border of
the city to Elsewhere, for doing so would release the kept memories back into the community.
Jonas retrieves a baby named Gabriel, who is to be killed by the authority for being different, and
they cross the border of the City into Elsewhere. Jonas’s gesture alters society’s course, forcing it
to change its procedures.