Equilibrium and Revolution

Kurt Wimmer's 2002 film, Equilibrium gives us an interesting lens through which to view the Russian revolution of 1917 on this, its centennial. Set in the latter half of the 21st century, the world has passed through World War III and has attempted to construct a society in which war is no more (Woodrow Wilson is surely smiling up from the grave). To do so, the political elites have located the problem of war in the facts of human nature, specifically in our capacity to feel. It is our passions, in a passing homage to Girard, that are the root of the violence that manifests itself so devastatingly in war. The decision is made that to suppress our more base desires and passions, we must also sacrifice the heights of human emotion; joy, love, etc. Thus, a drug is created to produce an emotional equilibrium in the populace. Under the effects of this new opiate, peace is declared; a peace that is maintained by a para-military order of pistol wielding monks.

On the surface, the movie appeals to our common-sense assumption that the heights of human emotion are in fact worth the price of deviant passions, for this is the price that must be paid for freedom. Implicitly, we are asked to understand that without freedom, the peace of Libria is an illusion, and so it is only as Christian Bale gets in touch with his emotions that freedom, and thus true peace, can be achieved. We watch as Bale discontinues the use of his emotion-dampening drugs, learns empathy in a heart-warming scene with a little puppy, and generally opens up cans of whoop-ass on anyone who gets in the way of his emotional self-discovery. The movie ends as the #Resistance descends on the city in a hail of machine-gun fire, overthrowing the oppressive faux-pacifistic social order as Bale makes short work of the bosses and their propaganda machines.

If this was all that was going on in this movie, it would be nothing more than another lack-luster shoot-em-up kung fu movie. Yet there is much more here than meets a casual watch-through. Allow me to pass over what could be an essay in itself about the relationship of our passions to ethics in order to unpack our intuition that the peace that exists in the dystopian city of Libria is a lie. The falsehood of Libria's peace is not merely in the lack of freedom that the citizenry have, but in the fact that the clerics and their jack-booted cronies are still waging an actual war against all the "terrorist" elements of their society who refuse to suppress their emotions. The clerics are involved in frequent and ongoing military operations that look more like something straight out of the deserts of the Iraq war than any reasonable use of a domestic constabulary. As the movie progresses, we learn about a rebel group of of well armed and highly organized freedom-fighters with whom the regime clashes frequently. The daily life of the citizenry of Libria is a spartan existence of grunge-militarism, and harsh discipline with only the empty voice of "Father" assuring them that this is in fact peace. There are some pretty obvious allusions to Orwell's "Big Brother" in the construct of the "Father" character, especially when it is revealed late in the film that "Father" has in fact been dead for years but his image has been maintained by a shadow government to maintain control. The peace that "Father" offers in Libria takes the form of Orwell's boot that stamps upon the human face forever - faces that in Libria, have been stripped of every indication of their humanity. The peace of Libria is the ultimate Pax Romana, an "equilibrium" that is only achieved through mass violence and the calculated dehumanizing of society.

Now we must turn our attention to the revolutionaries who fight against "Father" and his peace of lies. In an essay on the lasting significance of Lenin, Slavoj Zizek notes that every revolution, if it is to be successful, must have two revolutions. The first revolution carries within it the oppressive constructs of the old order of things, thus, if the emancipatory potential of the revolution is to be realized, there must be a second revolution that rejects the old oppressive structures in order to creates something truly new.

In Equilibrium we do in fact see two revolutions, though their orders are reversed. The first revolution is the more radical of the two, for as Christian Bale learns what it means to live as a man fully alive, the world is made new. Things look different, feel different, smell different - there has been a cosmic recreation simply by the small action of removing the drug. The second revolution is much more ambiguous, and continues to carry within it, the oppressive assumptions of "Father's" regime. In an aside during the planning of the coup, the leader of the resistance tells Bale's character that in order that the masses might enjoy the freedom of full human emotion, there would have to be some, like himself and Bale, who continue to deny themselves that freedom in order to secure it. In other words, the new order will only be available to them through the continued passionless application of violence that stabilized the old regime.

The movie ends in ambiguity. The final scenes show guards being mowed down by the automatic rifles of charging rebels, the propaganda apparatus crumbling, and the opiate factories being torched. What happens the morning after? Do the rebels follow the emancipatory potential of a world that has lost its oppressive chemically-induced equilibrium? Or will the rebels follow their leader's insight that to maintain freedom for the masses, the elites must continue to implement a reigned in version of the previous ideology?

It is this ambiguity of revolution that should be remembered during the centennial of the Russian Revolution. What lay before the Russian people was a chance to follow the emancipatory logic of their revolution to imaginatively create a new world. Unfortunately, their leaders blinked. The Bolsheviks did not complete the second revolution, and thus maintained the oppressive structures of the old tsarist regime that went on to leave millions dead in its wake, finally collapsing into the rise of a new tsar with the advent of Vladimir Putin.

Equilibrium provides us with a glimpse into the best of Christian humanism, insofar as Bale acts out an image the Renaissance discovery that "the glory of God is man fully alive." We see Bale grasp the fullness of his humanity in fleeting moments, yet turn away from it to embrace the dehumanizing programming of his old masters. The moments of humanity create life, the alternative is strewn with corpses.

The power of the Russian Revolution is found in its participation within the great revolutionary humanism of Christianity. In the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus there is a new humanity, the old has gone, the new has come. This universalizing and emancipatory logic animates all subsequent revolutions, yet as we know from St. Augustine, our sinful violence that disgusts us is also what we love best. At the very moment we are welcomed into the new humanity through crucifixion, we become confused, and seize for ourselves the Roman military apparatus that brought us the crucifixion, believing that it is this power that brings freedom instead of Christ's own. And so we stumble, as Peter stumbled, picking up the sword that Christ refused in and attempt to extend the moment of revolutionary emancipation that can only be achieved in Christ's own peaceful refusal of violence.

Saturday is Remembrance Day. We have a lot to remember this year, but let us never forget that the freedom that truly emancipates us does not come by clinging to the old reliable forms of violent power, but by entering the radical, revolutionary new humanity of Jesus.