The film’s central theme is the clash between the idealism of the naïve genius Wells as opposed to that of the intelligent, cynical Ripper. Wells was a noted utopian theorist (and even an early advocate of free love and women’s liberation) who believed that socialism would be the enabler of this future paradise. He fears that the Ripper would destroy such a utopia. What he finds, however, is a more dystopic society wherein he is lost, literally and metaphorically. Although an atheist he goes to a church to pray for a night’s rest, but is soon turned out into the streets in perhaps the film’s slyest note of cynicism. The Ripper, however, has had no such trouble adjusting to contemporary America and even more than that. In their scene together, the Ripper rightly informs Wells that Wells was wrong, and that far from being a monster, the Ripper is at home in this modern world, and even goes so far as to refer to himself as something of an amateur in comparison to what violence this world is capable of. His way of convincing Wells of this is alarmingly and tellingly simple – he turns on the TV and flicks between channels. The film’s boldest and most cynical suggestion is that although we consider the actual Wells to be a visionary, arguably in reality, the actual Ripper was the true visionary and thus indeed the due point of commencement of the modern world, a new world without God and almost without hope.
Although director Meyer is adept at systematically undercutting Wells’ idealism in this way, he does offer a note of hope in what is a genuinely charming and engagingly funny romantic relationship between McDowell and Steenburgen. Indeed, the film is also very much about how these two people, who are in a sense childlike innocents (McDowell in his difficulty in negotiating the modern world and Steenburgen in her genteel voice), find each other. There is thus also much humour in how Wells, long an advocate of women’s liberation, would react on encountering a post-sexual revolution, liberated woman. Their charm and courtship is held against the cynicism of the modern world and an antidote against the “vision” of the Ripper. Fate, however, will intervene as their idyllic romance is intercut with scenes of the Ripper on the prowl. Indeed, the Ripper uses a disco as a hunting ground, allowing director Meyer to suggest that one of the results of increased sexual freedom is the ease it gives the Ripper in pursuing his macabre vision. Free love is also the dream of the Ripper and as much a part of a dystopia as it is a supposed utopia. The film is thus about Wells’ lesson in humility as he moves from arrogant pomposity to sheer pleading desperation, sadly aware that the future he envisioned is far from the truth and that the Ripper may be more emblematic of human nature than he would care to admit. read more