THX 1138 (1971): WHEN THE FUTURE DECIDES YOU ARE EASIER TO CONTROL WITHOUT DESIRE

THX 1138 (1971): WHEN THE FUTURE DECIDES YOU ARE EASIER TO CONTROL WITHOUT DESIRE

George Lucas’s first feature film imagined a world of shaved heads, white rooms, compulsory medication, surveillance and manufactured happiness. More than fifty years later, THX 1138 may be even more unsettling.

By the BEAUX HOMMES Film & Culture Desk

Before George Lucas gave audiences Jedi Knights, Darth Vader, droids, Death Stars and a galaxy far, far away, he gave us something almost completely different.

He gave us a man with no real name.

A shaved head.

A white uniform.

A bottle of government-approved drugs.

And a society that has decided love, sexuality, individuality and disobedience are problems to be eliminated.

Released in 1971, THX 1138 was George Lucas’s first feature film as a director, developed from an experimental student short he had made at USC. Lucasfilm itself describes THX 1138 as his debut feature, made through Francis Ford Coppola’s American Zoetrope before Lucas established his own company.

It is difficult to imagine a greater contrast with the warmth and adventure of Star Wars.

THX 1138 is cold.

White.

Clinical.

Claustrophobic.

Sexually repressed.

Emotionally numbed.

And extraordinarily beautiful.

For BEAUX HOMMES Summer of Sci-Fi, that makes it essential viewing.

Because underneath all that white is a movie about something our magazine discusses constantly:

What happens when somebody else decides what you are allowed to do with your body?
WELCOME TO THE PERFECT SOCIETY

The future of THX 1138 appears, at first glance, remarkably orderly.

Citizens live in an enormous underground civilization.

Everybody has a designation rather than an ordinary name.

Everybody dresses similarly.

Almost everybody has a shaved head.

Work is organized.

Technology is everywhere.

Police maintain order.

Medication keeps citizens calm.

Sexual desire has been suppressed.

Reproduction is regulated.

Advertising continually encourages consumption.

There is even a computerized form of religion offering canned reassurance.

It sounds efficient.

It is also horrifying.

Robert Duvall plays THX 1138, a worker involved in manufacturing the very android police officers who enforce his society’s rules.

His roommate, LUH 3417, played by Maggie McOmie, secretly begins interfering with his mandatory medication.

And slowly THX begins to wake up.

The drugs have not simply been treating an illness.

They have been suppressing him.

His anxiety returns.

His fear returns.

His sexual desire returns.

His emotional life returns.

And eventually his love for LUH returns—or perhaps appears for the first time.

The society immediately has a problem.

THX is becoming human.

The regime considers that dangerous.

The film establishes that mind-altering medication is compulsory, sexual relations are forbidden and THX’s awakening begins after LUH reduces his medication.

ROBERT DUVALL BEFORE THE GODFATHER

There is something fascinating about seeing Robert Duvall here, just before The Godfather would make him internationally famous as Tom Hagen.

He is almost visually stripped bare.

No elaborate costume.

No distinctive hairstyle.

No fashionable accessories.

No traditional heroic uniform.

Lucas removes nearly everything Hollywood normally uses to tell an audience:

THIS IS THE STAR.

Duvall’s shaved head and white clothing make him resemble everybody else.

And yet his face becomes enormously important.

A twitch.

A frightened stare.

Confusion.

Desire.

Anger.

You watch an individual personality gradually emerge from a system designed to suppress individuality.

For BEAUX HOMMES readers, that is worth noticing.

We spend plenty of time celebrating appearance.

Hair.

Beards.

Clothing.

Muscle.

Fashion.

Personal style.

THX lives in a world that deliberately removes most of those signals.

The government essentially says:

You do not need personal style because you do not need a personal identity.

That makes the human face—and eventually the human body—one of the last territories of rebellion.

WHAT IF DESIRE ITSELF BECAME ILLEGAL?

This is where THX 1138 becomes particularly interesting for our magazine.

The society does not merely regulate behavior.

It attempts to eliminate desire.

Sex is dangerous because sex creates private intimacy.

Love is dangerous because love makes one person more important to you than the state.

Attraction is dangerous because attraction is irrational.

Desire cannot always be scheduled.

It cannot always be monetized.

It cannot always be directed toward approved objects.

Two people who genuinely love one another create a tiny society of their own.

And authoritarian systems tend to dislike competing loyalties.

THX and LUH therefore commit something much more revolutionary than having sex.

They begin choosing each other.

That choice means their government is no longer the most important thing in their emotional lives.

For a society built upon conformity, that is intolerable.

THE BODY AS A POLITICAL TERRITORY

BEAUX HOMMES readers should pay particular attention to this.

In THX 1138, the battle between the individual and society happens partly inside the body.

The government regulates chemistry.

Medication controls emotion.

Sexuality is controlled.

Reproduction is controlled.

Appearance is standardized.

Work is assigned.

Movement is monitored.

The state does not simply tell you how to behave.

It wants to determine what you feel.

That is a much deeper form of control.

A government that commands your actions controls part of your life.

A government that can chemically determine your emotions begins controlling the person who performs those actions.

The distinction is enormous.

And that is why THX waking up is so powerful.

His body begins telling him something different from what society tells him.

His hormones, fear, attraction and instinct return.

The supposedly defective human body becomes evidence that something inside him is still free.

THE WHITE WORLD

Visually, THX 1138 is remarkable.

The film’s art director was Michael Haller, and Lucas worked with cinematographers Albert Kihn and David Meyers to create a future that often feels less like a movie set than an enormous experiment in graphic design. The American Society of Cinematographers described Lucas as having a very precise visual concept for the film, including reference photographs that established its stark graphic language.

White dominates.

White clothing.

White walls.

White corridors.

White laboratories.

White light.

Shaved heads become almost sculptural shapes moving through the architecture.

Then Lucas creates one of the movie’s most unforgettable environments:

A prison that appears to have no walls at all.

It is simply white.

Endless white.

Human figures seemingly floating in nothing.

The production achieved the effect with a huge white cyclorama and deliberate overexposure, creating an almost borderless visual space.

This is brilliant art direction because Lucas reverses something we instinctively believe.

We associate darkness with imprisonment.

THX 1138 gives us a prison filled with light.

There are no visible bars.

There barely appear to be walls.

Yet the characters remain trapped.

Freedom does not always look open.

And oppression does not always look dark.

Sometimes oppression is clean.

Efficient.

Minimalist.

Well-lit.

And beautifully designed.

A WARNING TO DESIGNERS: BEAUTIFUL SYSTEMS CAN STILL BE EVIL

That is one of the film’s most useful lessons for BEAUX HOMMES artists, photographers and designers.

We are naturally attracted to beautiful objects.

Minimalism feels sophisticated.

White space feels luxurious.

Symmetry feels controlled.

Clean architecture feels modern.

THX 1138 uses all of those visual pleasures against us.

The society looks gorgeous.

That doesn’t make it humane.

This is something every visual artist should remember:

Good design and moral goodness are not the same thing.

A dictatorship can have an excellent graphic designer.

A cruel institution can occupy beautiful architecture.

A dangerous product can come in magnificent packaging.

Beauty persuades.

That is precisely why artists must understand its power.

GEORGE LUCAS BUILT THE FUTURE OUT OF THE PRESENT

THX 1138 also offers a master class in creating science fiction without building everything from scratch.

Lucas filmed extensively around the San Francisco Bay Area, using real contemporary locations that already looked futuristic.

The production used areas including the Marin County Civic Center, scientific facilities, airport spaces, control rooms and sections of the still-unfinished BART system. The American Society of Cinematographers reported that the company traveled to at least 22 Bay Area locations.

This was enormously clever.

Instead of asking:

How do we construct the twenty-fifth century?

Lucas often asked:

What exists right now that audiences have never seen before?

A transportation control center becomes futuristic command infrastructure.

A research facility becomes tomorrow’s medicine.

An unfinished tunnel becomes part of an underground civilization.

Industrial architecture becomes dystopia.

That is a lesson every independent filmmaker should remember.

You do not always need more money.

Sometimes you need better eyes.

THE FUTURE IS FLUORESCENT

Much of modern science fiction tries very hard to make people look attractive.

THX 1138 often does the opposite.

The filmmakers intentionally embraced harsh available lighting, including blue, white and green fluorescent tones that could drain warmth from human faces. The goal was to make the world feel less humane.

That decision matters.

Warm light says home.

Candlelight says intimacy.

Sunlight says life.

The fluorescent world of THX says institution.

Hospital.

Factory.

Laboratory.

Administration.

The people increasingly resemble components inside a machine.

And that makes the occasional appearance of warmer imagery much more powerful.

Lucas understands that color has meaning because scarcity gives it meaning.

If everything in your film is colorful, color cannot surprise us.

If almost everything is white—

one human face becomes an event.

THE ROBOT POLICE ARE BEAUTIFUL—AND TERRIFYING

Then there are the police.

They remain one of the film’s greatest designs.

Black uniforms.

White helmets.

Smooth metallic faces.

Almost human bodies.

Perfectly calm voices.

They do not need to scream constantly.

That would make them ordinary movie villains.

Instead, they often behave with bureaucratic professionalism.

And somehow that is worse.

They can beat someone while sounding like customer-service representatives.

Violence becomes procedure.

The silver faces also produce another disturbing effect.

You cannot negotiate emotionally with something that does not appear to possess an emotional face.

No anger.

No pity.

No hesitation.

Just enforcement.

For costume designers and character artists, this is magnificent work.

The police do not look chaotic.

They look finished.

That is exactly what makes them frightening.

CONSUME. OBEY. BE HAPPY.

One of THX 1138’s sharpest satirical ideas is that the society combines authoritarianism with consumerism.

Citizens are not merely ordered to obey.

They are encouraged to buy.

Consume.

Replace.

Purchase happiness.

The film repeatedly suggests that shopping and obedience have become almost inseparable.

This is not a society where everybody is simply poor and miserable.

It is a society that offers products as compensation for the absence of freedom.

That is much more interesting.

You don’t need to ask difficult questions.

Buy something.

You don’t need spiritual fulfillment.

Listen to the approved religious program.

You don’t need love.

Take your medication.

You don’t need individuality.

Consume the appropriate product.

Then return to work.

More than fifty years later, that satire has not exactly become less recognizable.

GOD AS CUSTOMER SERVICE

The film’s strange religious confessional deserves attention too.

THX enters a booth and speaks beneath an image of a deity called OMM.

But instead of genuine spiritual dialogue, he receives standardized reassurance.

It feels less like religion than an automated help desk.

That idea was extraordinarily forward-looking.

We now live in a world of automated menus, scripted customer interactions, algorithmic recommendations and artificial systems designed to simulate personal attention.

THX asks for meaning.

The machine gives him a response.

But has anyone actually listened?

The distinction between receiving an answer and being understood is one of the film’s quietest horrors.

DONALD PLEASENCE AND THE STRANGE MAN NAMED SEN

Donald Pleasence plays SEN 5241, one of the film’s most memorable characters.

SEN is not simply another heroic rebel.

He is awkward.

Manipulative.

Lonely.

Unpredictable.

At times almost pathetic.

Lucas avoids giving THX a perfectly noble band of revolutionaries.

Instead, the people who have fallen outside the system remain complicated human beings.

That matters.

Freedom does not automatically make someone virtuous.

It simply gives them the possibility of choosing.

THX must eventually determine what kind of man he wants to become without the system making that decision for him.

THE SOUND OF CONTROL

We cannot discuss THX 1138 without acknowledging its extraordinary sound design.

Walter Murch, who also collaborated on the screenplay, helped construct a dense world of radio voices, announcements, electronic chatter and disembodied instructions. Contemporary production accounts describe Murch assembling the film’s complex sound montage during postproduction.

Listen carefully.

The government is everywhere because the voice is everywhere.

Instructions float through the environment.

Warnings.

Numbers.

Commands.

Safety messages.

Commercial messages.

Conversations from unseen operators.

The society rarely becomes silent enough for its citizens to simply think.

Modern viewers may find that unexpectedly familiar.

We carry devices that speak.

Ping.

Buzz.

Recommend.

Alert.

Prompt.

Remind.

THX 1138 understood that the future might not merely watch us.

It might never stop talking to us.
AND THEN THE MOVIE STARTS MOVING

The final portion becomes something closer to the George Lucas audiences would later recognize.

Vehicles.

Speed.

Technology.

Machines.

Pursuit.

Editing.

Motion.

THX attempts to escape the underground civilization while the authorities pursue him.

Lucas’s lifelong fascination with cars and speed suddenly bursts through the minimalism.

The production used real tunnels around the Bay Area for the chase material, transforming ordinary infrastructure into a futuristic labyrinth.

You can almost see American Graffiti and Star Wars waiting somewhere inside these sequences.

Lucas the experimental filmmaker is beginning to meet Lucas the great kinetic entertainer.

EVEN THE POLICE HAVE A BUDGET

One of the movie’s blackest jokes involves bureaucracy pursuing THX only as long as doing so remains economically acceptable.

The system measures the cost.

At some point, capturing one man is no longer worth unlimited expenditure.

Think about what that means.

THX believes he is battling an all-powerful authoritarian state.

But to the system, he is also an accounting problem.

Human life becomes a line item.

Freedom becomes a cost-benefit calculation.

The joke is funny.

Then you think about it.

Then it becomes horrible again.

That combination is THX 1138 at its best.

THE CLIMB

Eventually THX climbs.

Up.

Away from the underground machinery.

Away from the drugs.

Away from the police.

Away from the artificial light.

He reaches the surface.

And Lucas gives us one of the simplest and most beautiful images in early science fiction:

A human silhouette against an enormous natural sky.

After a movie dominated by walls, tunnels, fluorescent lights and white interiors, the horizon feels almost impossible.

The sun becomes spectacular because the film has denied us the natural world.

No giant spaceship is required.

No elaborate special effect.

Just a man.

A sky.

A horizon.

Freedom.

The final exterior image was photographed at Port Hueneme, California, by a second unit that included future cinematographer Caleb Deschanel and filmmaker Matthew Robbins.

It is a reminder that one of science fiction’s most powerful images may simply be something we already possess.

The outside world.
GEORGE LUCAS BEFORE STAR WARS

Watching THX 1138 today is fascinating because we know what comes next.

Lucas would make American Graffiti in 1973.

Then, in 1977:

Star Wars.

Suddenly the director of one of the coldest dystopian films of the early 1970s would become responsible for one of cinema’s most beloved adventure universes.

But the connection is clearer than it first appears.

THX 1138 already contains Lucas’s fascination with:

Technology.

Vehicles.

Sound.

Authoritarian systems.

Faceless enforcers.

Individuals fighting enormous institutions.

Industrial environments.

Electronic surveillance.

Strange religions.

And ordinary human beings attempting to preserve themselves inside massive technological systems.

Darth Vader isn’t here.

Stormtroopers aren’t here.

The Empire isn’t here.

But some of the visual and philosophical DNA is already forming.

Lucasfilm itself identifies THX 1138 as Lucas’s debut feature and describes it as the visionary project preceding the establishment of Lucasfilm and American Graffiti.

WHAT BEAUX HOMMES READERS SHOULD TAKE FROM THX 1138

At first, THX 1138 may seem far removed from BEAUX HOMMES.

Nobody is dressed fabulously.

Hair barely exists.

Romance is illegal.

Individual style has been practically abolished.

But that is exactly why it belongs here.

Our magazine celebrates the things THX’s society fears.

Individuality.

Bodies.

Beauty.

Desire.

Art.

Fashion.

Human connection.

Curiosity.

Difference.

A BEAUX HOMMES reader may look at a muscular man and see beauty.

Another reader may admire an elegant woman.

Someone else falls in love with architecture.

Someone loves fashion.

Someone loves painting.

Someone loves men.

Someone loves women.

Someone loves both.

THX’s civilization wants to replace all of those unpredictable preferences with sameness.

And that may be the ultimate warning of the movie.

A perfectly controlled society cannot tolerate people who know what they like.

THE SHAVED HEAD AS AN ANTI-FASHION STATEMENT

Fashion deserves its own discussion.

Almost every citizen wears white and has little opportunity for individual presentation.

From one perspective, this appears anti-fashion.

But visually it becomes one of cinema’s most recognizable fashion statements.

That contradiction is fascinating.

Remove decoration and suddenly proportion becomes important.

Face becomes important.

Body shape becomes important.

Movement becomes important.

Texture becomes important.

A plain white garment makes the wearer more visible because there is nothing else competing for our attention.

For photographers, stylists and designers, THX 1138 is worth studying almost frame by frame.

Minimalism does not mean there is nothing to design.

Minimalism means every decision becomes visible.

THE HUMAN BODY WINS

And perhaps that is the movie’s secret.

The system tries to erase individuality.

Yet we still recognize THX.

We recognize LUH.

We recognize SEN.

Even with shaved heads.

Even wearing almost identical clothing.

Human beings refuse to become visually identical.

Faces differ.

Bodies differ.

Voices differ.

Gestures differ.

Desires differ.

Personalities return.

The system works tremendously hard to make everybody interchangeable.

Nature keeps making individuals.

For BEAUX HOMMES, that’s practically a manifesto.

WHAT ARTISTS CAN LEARN

THX 1138 should be required viewing for anyone interested in visual storytelling.

You do not need dozens of futuristic objects to create the future.

Choose a visual rule.

Lucas chose white.

Choose a silhouette.

Lucas chose shaved heads and standardized clothing.

Choose an opposing silhouette.

Lucas gave the police black uniforms and metallic faces.

Choose architecture that supports your idea.

Choose lighting that supports your idea.

Choose sound that extends the environment beyond what the camera can show.

And then remain disciplined.

That word matters:

Discipline.

The visual power of THX 1138 comes partly from Lucas refusing to decorate the film unnecessarily.

Every science-fiction artist should understand that.

Sometimes the thing you leave out is what creates the world.

WHAT MEN CAN LEARN

There is another lesson here for men.

THX begins as a productive, obedient citizen.

He works.

He follows instructions.

He takes the prescribed substances.

He does what he is told.

By his society’s standards, he is functioning perfectly.

Yet he is barely alive.

That raises a difficult question:

Is being productive the same thing as living well?

Men are frequently taught to define themselves through usefulness.

Produce.

Earn.

Perform.

Work.

Achieve.

Keep moving.

Don’t complain.

THX does all of that.

And none of it makes him free.

A man’s life also requires emotional connection.

Pleasure.

Rest.

Curiosity.

Love.

Friendship.

Choice.

A relationship with his own body.

And enough quiet to decide what he thinks rather than simply repeating what he has been told.

That may not look like science fiction.

It may simply look like being human.

WHICH VERSION SHOULD YOU WATCH?

Viewers today may encounter both the original theatrical version and Lucas’s later Director’s Cut, which includes revisions and digital additions.

The later version expands certain elements of the world.

But there is also something extraordinarily powerful about the severe economy of the original production.

BEAUX HOMMES recommends approaching the film first and foremost as a work of visual ideas.

Don’t worry if every effect looks contemporary.

It shouldn’t.

Look at composition.

Space.

Architecture.

Faces.

Uniformity.

Typography.

Sound.

Negative space.

Industrial texture.

That is where the film remains remarkably modern.

BEAUX HOMMES VERDICT
★★★★½ out of five

THX 1138 is not easy science fiction.

It does not invite you into its future.

It traps you there.

The movie can feel deliberately cold, abstract and emotionally distant.

That will frustrate some viewers.

Others will find it mesmerizing.

We fall into the second group.

This is George Lucas before the enormous commercial machinery of Star Wars existed—a young filmmaker experimenting with image, sound, architecture and the politics of conformity.

Roger Ebert, reviewing the film in 1971, praised what he regarded as its remarkable visual mastery. More than half a century later, that assessment is easy to understand.

The future of THX 1138 is frightening not because monsters have taken over.

There are no monsters.

Human beings built the system.

Human beings accepted the drugs.

Human beings created the police.

Human beings designed the machines.

Human beings exchanged unpredictability for security.

And then one human being begins feeling again.

That tiny act threatens everything.

For BEAUX HOMMES Summer of Sci-Fi, we can think of few messages more appropriate.

Protect your individuality.
Protect your imagination.
Protect your right to love.
Protect your right to decide what happens to your body.
And never assume that because a future is clean, efficient and beautifully designed—
it is a future worth living in.

BEAUX HOMMES — SUMMER OF SCI-FI

Beauty. Bodies. Art. Culture. Imagination.

www.beauxhommes.com