Equilibrium (film)

Equilibrium is a 2002 film about a futuristic world where emotions are suppressed and one of their elite learns to feel.

Directed and written by Kurt Wimmer.

• [after being taunted by DuPont, who is really Father] No. Not without incident.
• Look at you! [pause] [to himself] Look at you...
• Then you know what I'm going to do now?
• Tetragrammaton. There's nothing we can't do.
• I didn't feel anything.
• I pay it gladly.

• Its circular. You exist to continue your existence. What's the point?
• ...without love, without anger, without sorrow, breath is just a clock ticking.

• But I being poor, have only my dreams, I have spread my dreams under your feet, tread softly because you tread on my dreams. (reading Aedh wishes for the Cloths of Heaven - W.B. Yeats)
• I assume you dream Preston?
• It's just a vestigial word for a feeling you've never felt. - After Cleric Preston claims to be sorry

• You clean, we'll sweep.
• Cleric, I can only hope one day to be as uncompromising as you.
• You ask him for it. (in response to the interrogator's question: "What, would you say, is the easiest way to get a weapon away from a Grammaton Cleric?")
• Mind the uniform, cleric. I plan to be wearing it for a long time... (moments before being killed by Preston)
• I told you I'd make my career with you, Preston.
• It's my job to know what you're thinking.

• We have a network that's larger than you could ever imagine. Instant word comes that Father is dead, that the Council is leaderless. Bombs that have already been planted will be set off at Prozium clinics and factories around Libria. If we can succeed in disrupting the supply for even one day—one day—our cause will be won by human nature itself.

• [about Brandt] Take him to the Hall of Destruction for summary judgment and combustion.
• It's not the message that is important but our obedience to it.
• Be careful, Preston. You're treading on my dreams.
• A nearly unforgivable lapse, Cleric. I trust you'll be more vigilant in the future.
• You really should learn to knock.
• The Gun Kata. Through analysis of thousands of recorded gunfights, the Cleric has determined that the geometric distribution of antagonists in any gun battle is a statistically predictable element. The gun kata treats the gun as a total weapon, each fluid position representing a maximum kill zone, inflicting maximum damage on the maximum number of opponents while keeping the defender clear of the statistically traditional trajectories of return fire. By the rote mastery of this art, your firing efficiency will rise by no less than 120%. The difference of a 63% increase to lethal proficiency makes the master of the gun katas an adversary not to be taken lightly.

• Libria, I congratulate you. At last peace reigns in the heart of man. At last war is but a word whose meaning fades from our understanding. At last, we are whole. Librians, there is a disease in the heart of man. Its symptom is hate. Its symptom is anger. Its symptom is rage. Its symptom is war. The disease is human emotion. But Libria, I congratulate you, for there is a cure for this disease. At the cost of the dizzying highs of human emotion, we have suppressed its abysmal lows. And you, as a society, have embraced this cure: Prozium. Now we are at peace with ourselves and human kind is one. War is gone. Hate, a memory. We are our own conscience now, and it is this conscience that guides us to rate EC-10, for emotional content, all those things that might tempt us to feel, again, and destroy them. Librians, you have won. Against all odds, and your own natures. You, have, survived.
• Prozium - The great nepenthe. Opiate of our masses. Glue of our great society. Salve and salvation, it has delivered us from pathos, from sorrow, the deepest chasms of melancholy and hate. With it, we anesthetize grief, annihilate jealousy, obliterate rage. Those sister impulses towards joy, love, and elation are anesthetized in stride, we accept as fair sacrifice. For we embrace Prozium in its unifying fullness and all that it has done to make us great.
• In the first years of the 21st century, a third World War broke out. Those of us who survived knew mankind could never survive a fourth; that our own volatile natures could simply no longer be risked. So we have created a new arm of the law: The Grammaton Cleric, whose sole task it is to seek out and eradicate the true source of man's inhumanity to man - his ability to feel.
• ...a single inescapable fact—that mankind united with infinitely greater purpose in pursuit of war...than he ever did in pursuit of peace.
• Libria... Awake. Awaken to triumph again in the face of yet another day,another step in our unified march into the unwavering purpose...move ahead together into the certainty of our collective destiny.
• ...intrinsically, humans, as creatures of the Earth were drawn inherently always back to one thing—war. And thus we seek to correct not the symptom but the disease itself. We have sought to shrug off individuality, replacing it with conformity. Replacing it... with sameness... with unity, allowing each man, woman, and child in this great society to lead identical lives.
• The concept of identical environment construction allows each of us to head confidently into each moment with all the secure knowledge it has been lived before.
• Two millennia ago...in his conquest of the known world, Alexander the Great slaughtered more than one million human beings. Three centuries later, purely out of jealousy, Gaius Germanicus, "Caligula", murdered his own sister, impregnated with his own child.
• ....The revolutionary precept of the hate crime.

Partridge: You always knew. … "But I being poor have only my dreams. I have spread my dreams under your feet. Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams." I assume you dream, Preston.

Preston: I'll do what I can to see they go easy on you.

Partridge: We both know they never go easy.

Preston: Then I'm sorry.

Partridge: No, you're not. You don't even know the meaning. It's just a vestigial word for a feeling you've never felt. Don't you see, Preston, it's gone, everything that makes us what we are, traded away.

Preston: There's no war. No murder.

Partridge: What is it you think we do?

Preston: No. You've been with me, you've seen how it can be, the jealously, the rage.

Partridge: A heavy cost. I pay it gladly.

---

Preston: Every time we come from the Nethers to the city it reminds me of why we do what we do.

Partridge: It does?

Preston: I beg your pardon?

[Partridge injects Prozium dose into his neck]

Partridge: It does.

---

Robbie Preston: John?

John Preston: Yes?

Robbie Preston: I saw Bobbie Taylor crying today. He didn't know, but I saw. Do you think I should report him?

John Preston: (Pauses) Unquestionably.

---

Mary: You can't do this. You cannot do this!

Preston: Tetragrammaton. There's nothing we can't do.

---

Mary: Let me ask you something. Why are you alive?

John Preston: I'm alive... I live... to safeguard the continuity of this great society. To serve Libria.

Mary: It's circular. You exist to continue your existence. What's the point?

John Preston: What's the point of your existence?

Mary: To feel. 'Cause you've never done it, you can never know it. But it's as vital as breath. And without it, without love, without anger, without sorrow, breath is just a clock... ticking.

---

Brandt: What are you doing?

Preston: I'm rearranging my desk.

Brandt: You didn't like the way it was before?

Preston: I had no feelings about it. I'm merely attempting to optimize.

---

Rebel: Don't do it. He'll shoot us in the back.

Preston: If I was going to shoot you I'd shoot you in the face.

---

Jurgen: We've been watching you, Preston.

Preston: You're Jurgen.

Jurgen: You're feeling. [pauses] Do you know why you came?

---

Jurgen: But the first thing you learn about emotion is that it has its price. A complete paradox. But without restraint, without control, emotion is chaos.

Preston: But how is that different-

Jurgen: The difference being is that when we want to feel, we can.

---

DuPont: Wait, Wait, look at me, look at me, I'm life, I live, I-I breathe, I feel. Now that you know it, can you really take it? Is it really worth the price?

Preston: I pay it gladly. [shoots DuPont, killing him]

• In a future where freedom is outlawed outlaws will become heroes. (USA)
• Two men. One battle. No compromise. (UK)
• You cannot get angry. You can get even. (UK Trailer)
• The only thing more powerful than the system, is the man who will overthrow it. (Scandinavia)

• Christian Bale — John Preston
• Emily Watson — Mary O'Brien
• Sean Bean — Erol Partridge
• Taye Diggs — Brandt
• Angus Macfadyen — DuPont

• Equilibrium quotes at the Internet Movie Database
• Film Transcript & Shooting Script at Equilibrium Fansite