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THX 1138 is set, like I said, in a bleak, Orwellian future where both emotion and physical love have been outlawed by the State. Citizens seem to be divided into a Ruling Class and a Working Class. The workers are shaved bald for maximum conformity, kept docile and compliant with drugs, and forced to surveil and inform on one another. They also get the most difficult and dangerous jobs, which sounds bad until you remember they’re all on drugs. Everyone wanders from home to work, from work to home - calm as Hindu cows and blissfully unaware of the monotony of their own existence. There is a police force, but it’s comprised entirely of passively tempered androids.

They speak in the condescending, sing songy voice of a Kindergarten teacher, and will not resort to force even if you attack them. It kind of feels good when one of them gets jacked up.

THX 1138 is the name of the story’s protagonist, played by an impossibly young Robert Duvall. He’s a model worker, but then who isn’t? On the rare occasions anyone steps out of line, they are taken away, “reprogrammed,” and plugged back into the hive mind. THX (his friends, such as they are, call him “thux”) works at a factory that assigns these annoying police droids. His roommate is a fetching redhead called LUH 3417 (Maggie McOmie). They live together in state approved monotony, eating tofu cubes for dinner, and watching government television - which (not unlike the Internet) is all pornography, violence and brainwashing.

But today, THX isn’t feeling well. He complains of being barely able to finish his shift at work. It turns out that LUH has a crush on him, and has been messing with his medication, hoping to make him more pliant. Of course, this means she’s been off her own meds, which is a definite no-no. LUH eventually gets her wish, as she and THX begin nurturing the kind of romance you get in a fully oppressed, completely automated, tofu-infused society like this one. So yay, they’re two young rebels in love, but boo - LUH works at the government surveillance facility.

She and her work husband SEN 5421 (Donald Pleasance) are in charge of watching the city, so she of all people knows they’re going to get caught. They do, which of course is kind of a big deal, and SEN is involved - but this is one of several aspects of the film that I found hard to get my head around. I am merely assuming that LUH started switching THX’s medication because she had a thing for him - because that’s kind of what happened. But it’s never made clear whether this was part of a plan, or whether she just woke up one morning and decided to do what was in the script.

Likewise, it’s never made clear what’s motivating SEN. Eventually he uses his pull to have himself assigned as THX’s roommate, but why? Is he cockblocking LUH? Is he crazy? I also had trouble overlooking the fact that the end result of all this is that THX ends up becoming a pariah - a mantle which he seems to take on somewhat willingly. He’s motivated to find out what happened to LUH, but he never would have cared about her in the first place had she not started screwing with him. And her reasons for doing that are never explained - which in a roundabout way, sort of undermines the whole premise.

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