If Thinking Gives You a Headache, Don't Watch This Film
I've been listening to an Australian duo, Pleasure Symbols--two women, one playing bass and singing, the other playing keyboards. Musical minimalism, rather haunting, and in the case of my favorite song of theirs, "Ultraviolence," magnetic, addictive, and beautiful, yet, a song so heavy in tone it resembles a dirge. I've listened to that one song on YouTube about once a day for the past few weeks. It occupies a category by itself; something that can be said for a small number of art works.
John Boorman's Zardoz, from 1974, exists in a category by itself. It is a social satire of the class system, an extrapolation to the year 2293, presenting types of people evolved or devolved from present day humankind. In this way it resembles H.G. Wells's The Time Machine, with its airy sun-loving humans, the Eloi, and the dreadful underground Morlocks. While Wells dealt with two groups, Boorman, who wrote Zardoz, shows numerous types within the main groups of Eternals (immortal humans) and Brutals (mortal primitive people struggling to survive in "the Outlands"), living separately on a post-apocalyptic Earth.
An Eternal named Arthur Frayn has been experimenting with Brutals, flying about in an airship resembling a great stone head with a fierce gaze and open mouth. To the Brutals, Frayn calls himself Zardoz. They believe he's a god. He turns them from a hunting culture into an agricultural society providing food for the Eternals. He creates enforcers called Exterminators to keep order. These Exterminators wear Zardoz masks and ride horses, go on killing raids, propagate the species through rape. Only Exterminators are allowed to breed.
One of these, Zed (Sean Connery), is an unusual Exterminator in that one day he came across a library and was taught to read at the instigation of a mysterious person who turns out to be an Eternal. Far more enlightened than his fellow Brutals, he gets the help of some Exterminators to sneak him on board the flying stone head, which takes him to the green tranquil valley where the Eternals live their lives of languid self-indulgence. The Eternals don't sleep or have sex; they're fascinated and also repelled by Zed's vitality. Some want to kill him right away, others are too curious to get rid of him.
Zed's presence in the Eternals' endless lives utterly and fatally changes them. His name, the English version of zero, or omega, the final letter of the Greek alphabet, suggests an ending and a new beginning.
Charlotte Rampling plays an Eternal opposed to Zed's presence. In fighting against him, she becomes increasingly brutal, like the mortals in the Outlands. She comes around to wanting him, though, as the lines between immortal and mortal blur together. Rampling is a great actress with a striking, impassive face. I've always found her to be a mesmerizing performer, as in Angel Heart and The Night Porter. Connery puts his Brutal character across, almost surprisingly, given the film's bizarreness. I first heard of this film in a book written by a critic compiling what he thought of as the worst movies ever made. I read his review, but I was struck by the film's images accompanying the text. Shots of the giant stone head made Zardoz seem to me a film worth watching. It looked imaginative and strange, plus I was familiar with a few of Boorman's films by that point in my life: Excalibur, Point Blank, and Deliverance.
When I was about twenty and reading about this "one of the worst films," Boorman's work struck me as original and brilliant, challenging to the mind, and also beautiful and unforgettable. Never believe what a critic writes about a specific film or novel you haven't yet seen. See the film, read the novel, judge for yourself. I was assured, for example, by the unanimous writings of dozens of critics that Catwoman, starring Halle Berry, is a horrendously bad film, not worth anyone's time, practically a crime against cinema. This extreme reaction only intrigued me to watch it, and when I did, I found it to be an adequate urban fantasy adventure drama; not great, but not bad, either--a pretty good film, mostly.
In the IMDB page for Zardoz, a reviewing user offers this opening line: "Without question, the most brilliant bad movie EVER made..."
A category by itself: most brilliant bad movie ever made. My own suggestion for such a film would be Edward D. Wood, Jr.'s Glen or Glenda, but even as I write that I want to emphasize my lack of disdain for Wood's movies, films described typically as inept. For me, they fascinate with their creativity and humor, the work of a filmmaker determined to make movies in spite of a system uninterested in what he was trying to do.
Boorman has far greater technical skills and bigger budgets than Edward Wood, but in Boorman's case, working with peculiar material like Zardoz, we can see the creative abundance of an artist willing to delve into the difficult crafting of future societies, philosophical ideas, political structures, religious ideas, cultural practices, language, all wrapped up in under two hours, with no sequels, leaving behind mysterious images like that extraordinary stone head, floating through gray clouds, Beethoven's magnificent Seventh Symphony on the soundtrack.
John Boorman reached high with this film; it would behoove many directors today to step outside their safe zones and make something unusual, taking the chance that critics will hate what they come up with.
Vic Neptune
I've been listening to an Australian duo, Pleasure Symbols--two women, one playing bass and singing, the other playing keyboards. Musical minimalism, rather haunting, and in the case of my favorite song of theirs, "Ultraviolence," magnetic, addictive, and beautiful, yet, a song so heavy in tone it resembles a dirge. I've listened to that one song on YouTube about once a day for the past few weeks. It occupies a category by itself; something that can be said for a small number of art works.
John Boorman's Zardoz, from 1974, exists in a category by itself. It is a social satire of the class system, an extrapolation to the year 2293, presenting types of people evolved or devolved from present day humankind. In this way it resembles H.G. Wells's The Time Machine, with its airy sun-loving humans, the Eloi, and the dreadful underground Morlocks. While Wells dealt with two groups, Boorman, who wrote Zardoz, shows numerous types within the main groups of Eternals (immortal humans) and Brutals (mortal primitive people struggling to survive in "the Outlands"), living separately on a post-apocalyptic Earth.
An Eternal named Arthur Frayn has been experimenting with Brutals, flying about in an airship resembling a great stone head with a fierce gaze and open mouth. To the Brutals, Frayn calls himself Zardoz. They believe he's a god. He turns them from a hunting culture into an agricultural society providing food for the Eternals. He creates enforcers called Exterminators to keep order. These Exterminators wear Zardoz masks and ride horses, go on killing raids, propagate the species through rape. Only Exterminators are allowed to breed.
One of these, Zed (Sean Connery), is an unusual Exterminator in that one day he came across a library and was taught to read at the instigation of a mysterious person who turns out to be an Eternal. Far more enlightened than his fellow Brutals, he gets the help of some Exterminators to sneak him on board the flying stone head, which takes him to the green tranquil valley where the Eternals live their lives of languid self-indulgence. The Eternals don't sleep or have sex; they're fascinated and also repelled by Zed's vitality. Some want to kill him right away, others are too curious to get rid of him.
Zed's presence in the Eternals' endless lives utterly and fatally changes them. His name, the English version of zero, or omega, the final letter of the Greek alphabet, suggests an ending and a new beginning.
Charlotte Rampling plays an Eternal opposed to Zed's presence. In fighting against him, she becomes increasingly brutal, like the mortals in the Outlands. She comes around to wanting him, though, as the lines between immortal and mortal blur together. Rampling is a great actress with a striking, impassive face. I've always found her to be a mesmerizing performer, as in Angel Heart and The Night Porter. Connery puts his Brutal character across, almost surprisingly, given the film's bizarreness. I first heard of this film in a book written by a critic compiling what he thought of as the worst movies ever made. I read his review, but I was struck by the film's images accompanying the text. Shots of the giant stone head made Zardoz seem to me a film worth watching. It looked imaginative and strange, plus I was familiar with a few of Boorman's films by that point in my life: Excalibur, Point Blank, and Deliverance.
When I was about twenty and reading about this "one of the worst films," Boorman's work struck me as original and brilliant, challenging to the mind, and also beautiful and unforgettable. Never believe what a critic writes about a specific film or novel you haven't yet seen. See the film, read the novel, judge for yourself. I was assured, for example, by the unanimous writings of dozens of critics that Catwoman, starring Halle Berry, is a horrendously bad film, not worth anyone's time, practically a crime against cinema. This extreme reaction only intrigued me to watch it, and when I did, I found it to be an adequate urban fantasy adventure drama; not great, but not bad, either--a pretty good film, mostly.
In the IMDB page for Zardoz, a reviewing user offers this opening line: "Without question, the most brilliant bad movie EVER made..."
A category by itself: most brilliant bad movie ever made. My own suggestion for such a film would be Edward D. Wood, Jr.'s Glen or Glenda, but even as I write that I want to emphasize my lack of disdain for Wood's movies, films described typically as inept. For me, they fascinate with their creativity and humor, the work of a filmmaker determined to make movies in spite of a system uninterested in what he was trying to do.
Boorman has far greater technical skills and bigger budgets than Edward Wood, but in Boorman's case, working with peculiar material like Zardoz, we can see the creative abundance of an artist willing to delve into the difficult crafting of future societies, philosophical ideas, political structures, religious ideas, cultural practices, language, all wrapped up in under two hours, with no sequels, leaving behind mysterious images like that extraordinary stone head, floating through gray clouds, Beethoven's magnificent Seventh Symphony on the soundtrack.
John Boorman reached high with this film; it would behoove many directors today to step outside their safe zones and make something unusual, taking the chance that critics will hate what they come up with.
Vic Neptune
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