The Zero Theorem - too much maybe?

Did you ever watch a film and think - "that's too much isn't it"?  Well I did, and it was Terry Gilliam's The Zero Theorem, a film that I watched last weekend with a group of friends who seemed only partly up for something as weird and absurdist as this.  Terry Gilliam is well-known for his abstract and existential take on life and the world, but with The Zero Theorem he has taken it to another level.  Here, Christoph Waltz plays Qohen, a high-level computer programmer working in a semi-totalitarian garish near future England.  He works for The Company, an organisation headed by the mysterious Management (Matt Damon) who's interests involve amongst others, proving the Zero Theorem.

Qohen's work takes the form of what we in the current age might recognise as computer games, one looks very similar to Minecraft and involves the solution to the Zero Theorem itself.  The theorem is that there is no meaning to anything, and that everything is pointless.  Qohen himself seems utterly detached from everything around him, and so is perfectly-suited to a job that might end up proving the pointlessness of it all.  He starts out working in a bling-encrusted garish communal area, but is soon moved into the complete seclusion of an abandoned church, where he gets visits from the Management's whiz-kid son, an online erotic entertainer, and a AI psychologist - all of them trying to help him solve the Zero Theorem.

In short, this is a film that's completely mental.  It's mental in its styling, mental in its dialogue and pacing, mental in its sets, colours and outfits, mental in its depiction of the future and utterly mental in is plot and meaning.  A discussion after the film led us to the idea that the story is meant to be about choices, fate, and working out what you want to do with your life.  Qohen is a man who wants for nothing, and the fact that he lives in a church might lead you towards a Jesus metaphor.  Maybe?  In the end the message seems to be that there may or may not be any 'point' to everything, but we might as well all just find our own path and enjoy it while we're here.  Other interpretations are probably better - but that's the best I've got.

The problem is that it's all just too much.  Qohen is a character who never gets introduced properly.  The world he lives in is too crazy to make any sense.  It's hard to work out what's going on or what the plot's meant to be about when you're spending enough time trying to work out what the green vials that Qohen keeps handing through a hole-in-the-wall are actually for.  It's a film that feels like an incredible self-indulgence on the part of the director.  It's like he dreamed a load of mental stuff up that made him chuckle without anyone really coming along and warning him that it might make little sense to the average film-goer.

If you watch The Zero Theorem, be prepared to be dazed and confused.  Also tell me if you think Matt Damon looks like Philip Seymour Hoffman in it.