THX-1138

I have to say, after seeing George Lucas' new cut of THX-1138, that I found it completely inoffensive and worth seeing. The new effects shots, for the most part, added to the film and were in keeping with the original style. The only part that seemed to be pushing it for me were the completely CG shell-dwellers who make a brief appearance towards the end of the film. Thankfully, Lucas keeps them mostly obscured and the shot dark. In fact, I enjoyed it enough that I'm actually going to buy the new DVD.

It's interesting, my first reaction to all of Lucas' "special edition" revisionism is irritation and bewilderment. It makes him seem like a bit of a nutjob the way he keeps altering his films and then restricting access to anything but the "latest and greatest" version. But I can tolerate, even look forward to, most "director's cut" versions of films, if it has been insinuated that the studio that put out the picture made alterations or cuts against the director's wishes. So if this version is the one that George Lucas wanted to make, how is that different? When is a movie no longer a possession of the artists that make it, when does it belong to posterity? Should one even think about cinema on those terms? Or does the 'real' film only exist in the mind of the filmmaker? I still mantain that imperfections and compromise are part of what makes a film, but THX-1138 has shown me that it's not necessarily a bad thing to have a movie that lives and grows over the years, maybe even a film that is never 'finished'. In this instance at least, the film has only become more of what it already was. Maybe one day in the distant future when (and if) Lucas' copyright on the work expires, different disparate fragments of the film can be sampled and mutated, becoming their own new films. The footage and ideas could be used just as THX-1138's hive society intended to use him, as spare parts. This seems like a crazy idea to some, but if you want to take the idea of a living, changing film to its logical conclusion, there you are.