THX 1138

Lucas' first film, a reworking of 1984 set in a computer-controlled future world where THX 1138 (Duvall) becomes an outlaw hounded by android police after rediscovering love, long banned in this drug-soothed Garden of Eden where children are created by test-tube. Overall the film is a little hazy, and inclined to fall back on familiar messages about humanity and inhumanity after what one presumes was the nuclear fall. But visually it is often extraordinary, with Lucas playing on perspectives and dislocations throughout, nowhere more brilliantly than in the 'prison' represented by a limbo of whiteness that seems to stretch as far as the eye can see. White-clad against this whiteness, human figures disappear except for their hands and faces, others mysteriously appear out of the blinding glare of nothingness, and one can readily believe in this infinity through which THX 1138 must journey endlessly if he is to escape. Some nice touches of humour, too.