There is something disturbing about "Loom" from its very onset. Everything in the environment seems created to facilitate human life and work. Yet, much like in Brazil, nothing really seems to work. Lights are blinding rather than enlightening, Chairs are empty and always in the way. Everything is cold and robotic, even when it's bathed in warm color. I read certain influence of Japanese or Korean Movies and Manga into Loom.
It seems like Loom displays a universe where people are always either crammed together (at work) or lonely (in their free time). Being human seem to be superfluous for anything except work. And work is all about making protein to feed the society.
The main character is a technician in the meat/protein growth industry. He controls the produce quality, growth rate and maturity. The breeding chambers, where animal proteins are matured regularly fail. It's a delicate process, which requires a certain growth hormone to work effectively. Apparently that is a very valuable substance and our protagonist made his own experiments with it; I won't disclose what he's doing with it. Find it out and see for yourself!
Here is a movie from someone who read P.K.Dick and some Yukito Kishiro. Perhaps also Kobe Abe and Zizek. The director understands that Sci-Fi can be social criticism and deeply philosophical when it's not trying to be Sci-fi. The reason to make something Sci-Fi is to question what you know and create something yet unseen.
This movie could be shot in a quarantine zone or within a hospital, but it gives away it's sci-fi nature in every beat of hopelessness, in each glimpse of the antihero protagonist's eye. It connects to me across a border of void it creates. It's not concrete, yet definitive. Mixed messages from every scene. And there is a message.
Like today you have to make yourself a purpose in life, in the future (quite literally). And just like today you must fear that people, who live only by greed and desire nothing but power, will take it away from you.
This is a movie that deserves to be written to an end, but it will be a very difficult task for any writer, I'm afraid. I can recommend it.
