I just took a break to watch the film on TV, I hadn't seen it since it first came out. I used to think it was a bit over the top, clever satire, but exaggerated. Now I'm not so sure.

On second viewing, it was remarkably on target, Dr Who meets Kafka. But what WAS the target? Corporate welfare state? Laissez-faire statism? Does it really make any difference? The movie is really about the automation of bureaucracy, the commodification of indifference. Either way, its all about the institutionalization of inhumanity.

Its a grim future, and science fiction has been warning us about it for decades. Remember Player Piano, The Space Merchants, Stand on Zanzibar?

"Statism". I love that word.