Terry Gilliam directs Christoph Waltz, Mélanie Thierry  and David Thewlis in this sad sci-fi satire of our online work, social and sexual lives in a dystopian future.

I don’t recognise this world. Not the one on screen, mind. The one on screen with tramps living in piles of rubbish, stain glass illuminated cyber junk shop homes and erotically twee dream states, I recognise keenly. Yes, it’s a Terry Gilliam movie. I recognise the straight from the Brazil-era bureaucracy that controls the protagonists lives to young Lucas Hedges showing up to mimic Brad Pitt’s manic turn in 12 Monkeys. No, I just don’t recognise a world where it takes me 4 years to get around to watching the latest Terry Gilliam creation, and then feeling like it was an utter slog to watch. Sure… Brothers Grimm, Tideland and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus weren’t up to much but they had glimmers of hope and spunk within their collective troubled productions’ end products. The Zero Theorem merely feels like a lost old man raking over his long past glories and throwing in a few smart cars, references to social media and a plinky plonky cover of a modern song from 20 years ago (Radiohead’s Creep À la a John Lewis Christmas ad) in the begging prayer it makes him seem relevant. So grinding and obvious it is the first Gilliam feature I have no interest in ever revisiting, despite a sweet and sexually enticing turn from Mélanie Thierry. Sad times.

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