Film Review: The Zero Theorem

Terry Gilliam's "The Zero Theorem" doesn't add up. It's an insanely great movie, yeah. I'm saying it literally doesn't add up. Resists attempts to balance the equation with a neat rational formula.


Qohen Leth is as bald as a sperm. A brilliant mathematician/programmer of some variety. He lives alone in a ruined Cathedral he bought for a song. His phobias basically run the gamut of existence. Non-existence is his greatest fear. (Which he visualizes in hallucinations of the final black hole sucking in a collapsing universe at the end of time. What're you afraid of Qohen? Nothing. Ha-ha.) The poor phobic slob drags himself to work in a cubicle for Management. He just wants to work out of his burned-out basilica.

Then, in a wacky twist of fate,m Management makes an exception and let's him work out of his home. His job: Proving the zero theorem of the title. That theorem being: 0 = 100%. Which is another way of saying ...
It all adds up to nothing.
Yep. Proving his greatest fear. That's his job.

The future has come and gone—where were you?

Superficially, it looks like he's repeating himself/. Brazil is cold, dark, bureaucratic, opressive.

At the end of Neuromancer, the digital ghosts of two formerly breathing human beings wind up on a virtual beach hanging out forever. 


Nothing, what a concept.