Parallel to the release of the Star Wars Trilogy on DVD, George Lucas and Warner Brothers teamed up to release another one of his celluloid creations. The THX 1138 DVD set, which comes with a full second disk of special features, allows for a marvelous, in-depth exploration of George Lucas' filmmaking beyond Star Wars.The film, an Orwellian escape tale, tells the story of a world where everything is monitored, and of one unassuming character's escape from that world. THX 1138 (Robert Duvall, Gods and Generals) is, much like every other person in society, a drone. He does difficult, dangerous work constructing nuclear-powered police robots in a vast, underground civilization. To keep him and his fellow workers in line, the society prescribes daily doses of sedative medication that suppress his emotions and encourage very specific, intense, narrow focus. THX's roommate, LUH 3417 (Maggie McOmie), a more rebellious character, has somehow decided to stop taking her medication, and falls in love with THX. Wanting desperately for THX to love her in return, she sneaks some of his medication out of his diet. Not surprisingly, the movie then follows the pattern of tales of Utopia-gone-awry-THX is discovered, and has to escape.

Although Lucas channels a common, basic story through a new texture here, much like he does with the Star Wars films, it is clear that his concept is far less literary and far more cinematic. From the beginning, the film is a quasi-experimental visual and aural ride. The sights and sounds are the central elements, the most memorable characters and characteristics we encounter. Lucas, in the marvelous audio commentary that accompanies the film, explains that his primary goal was "to create a visual experience and a sound experience that was more atmospheric in nature." The story is layered deeply and complexly into carefully wrought textures of sound and image.

There is a second artist in the film who is featured heavily in the DVD's special features. Walter Murch (The Conversation) is perhaps one of Hollywood's most important sound designers. He shares the commentary track with Lucas, and even has an additional commentary section of his own, in which he discusses the origins and ideas of some of the sounds that are heard throughout the film. His presence in the bonus materials is significant in much the same way that his presence in the film is significant-there has never been a film that sounds quite like THX, and Walter Murch is largely responsible for that.

THX serves as an interesting access point to Lucas' mind and mindset in his pre-Star Wars days. Some of the elements of the film are similar. Murch describes Lucas' directive "to make a film from the future, rather than about the future," which has similarities to Lucas' approach to the atmosphere of the Star Wars films. Even the theme of a character leaving the safe, predictable environment for something unknown and potentially dangerous comes across in both films. But where THX is highly experimental, Star Wars was merely daring.

Lucas, working through Francis Ford Coppola's film company American Zoetrope, shot the film in San Francisco, away from the eyes of the studio executives, who would likely have fired him on the spot, he claims, had they seen the footage in 'rushes' (the daily screenings of the previous day's work). Coming out of film school, Lucas was primarily interested in art cinema, mentioning Jean-Luc Godard (Breathless), one of the major filmmakers of the French New-Wave as one of his heroes. THX is actually an extended, feature-length version of Lucas' student film from the University of Southern California (USC), Electronic Labyrinth THX 1138 4EB, a highly stylized "experimental" film which, remarkably, is available on the bonus-material DVD. At the end of Lucas' audio commentary, he remarks that he still finds edgy, experimental movies far more interesting than mainstream films (which perhaps sheds some light on the apparent heartlessness of the recent Star Wars installments), and hopes to return to that approach soon. To those of us who are only familiar with Star Wars, and perhaps with American Graffiti, the thought of Lucas as an art-film director seems like a contradiction in terms.

THX 1138 puts Lucas in a very different light. Although he makes mainstream films, he seems to think experimentally. Perhaps all of those special effects of the Star Wars films were products of that experimental part of his mind, rather than of the conventional part.

The film, the commentary and especially the highly insightful bonus materials make this DVD set one of the most interesting and insightful that I have seen. It is well worth exploring.