ZARDOZ SPEAKS TO YOU, HIS CHOSEN ONES.
He speaks to you of his wonderful, magical, infuriating, nonsensical, visually bounteous film.
This review is the direct result of a number of comments noticed by Your Friendly Ruling Council of Eternals Admins which indicate that a disturbing number of you may not have seen this film. The original plan was to write the entire review as Zardoz, and post it using the Zardoz account. However, I tried it out for a paragraph, and trust me…as a reader, that gimmick has its limits.
The 1974 movie Zardoz is a passion project tossed as a bone to director, screenwriter, and producer John Boorman in appreciation of his wild success with the 1972 classic, Deliverance. If you haven’t yet seen that one, I’m afraid it’s a tad too conventional for Reviews You’ll Never Use. Deliverance is a completely mainstream film, and so will find no place in this column.
Zardoz marks only the second post-Bond film of Sean Connery. The actor was apparently having some trouble with typecasting, and not only accepted the role, but became fast friends with Boorman. Our other leading thespian is the beautiful Charlotte Rampling, a prolific actress known for many roles over the years, but perhaps best remembered by trash cinema & horror fans from her turn in the 1977 Richard Harris vehicle Orca, a brutally unsubtle Jaws knock-off.
Given carte blanche, Boorman oversaw every aspect of the film, from writing to post-production. In his director commentary it is obvious that he reflects on the film fondly but admits that he perhaps stretched too far. To which your humble author would reply, Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s a heaven for? Indeed what Mr. Boorman considers an ultimately flawed product, is still so delightful in myriad ways that I shudder to think what would have come about if he had succeeded in bringing the totality of his vision to the screen.
Our film opens in the year 2293 with a floating head providing exposition (explained by Boorman to be an ultimately unsuccessful attempt tacked on in post-production to reduce audience confusion). Interestingly, this narrator is fully self-aware and refers to his understanding that he is a fictional construct of the writer/director. The head inexplicably has a thin drawn-on mustache and goatee. We cut to a giant flying head that vomits guns and commands the “Brutals” worshiping it to go forth and kill, because, “the penis is evil” and overbreeding brings about a plague of men.
One particularly clever Brutal, our protagonist Zed, stows away in the flying head and is taken to a realm preserved out of time, where the enlightened scientific remnants of advanced humanity live eternal lives of unspeakable drudgery. Punishment in this society is conducted by forced aging, the senile being sent to live in what appears to be an endless New Year’s Eve party ala TGI McScratchy’s. Others simply give up caring about life, and become Apathetics, standing around catatonic and being given green bread on which to sustain themselves. The self-styled Eternals view themselves as the preservers of the past, collapsed civilization, and their Eden is run by a supercomputer known as the Tabernacle.
The Eternals capture Zed and decide to study him, to find out how the vulgar strain of humanity has changed over the last two hundred years. One thing leads to another, as things inevitably tend to do in a story, and ultimately the Eternals find the answer to their weary prison of never-ending life.
This film feels like something that was going to be, supposed to be, could have been, a great artistic achievement. Boorman’s self-directed criticism is on solid ground; it’s all simply too much. The visuals are wonderful. The costumes, the colors, the backgrounds, are all rich and help to bring this very interesting world to life. The problem is that this world is so very rich, that it becomes simply impossible to do it justice while remaining focused on progressing the plot. Who cleans up the Apathetics and the prematurely aged Renegades? They’re all quite spotless. Where do these non-functioning individuals relieve themselves? How on earth do the Eternals plan to cope when, inevitably, everyone slips up and commits transgressions resulting in forced aging into senility? The psychological scenes, in particular, seem over-wrought, as one begins to slip the line of confusing complexity for its own sake and nonsensicality with an artistic statement.
For all that, I cannot find it in my heart to say this is a bad film. Imperfect? Surely. Plot holes you could drive a reasonably-priced sedan through? Absolutely. But the film is so lovely, the acting so involved, the entire production handled with such obvious love and hope, that it wins you over. Boorman is a good enough director to take what in anyone else’s hands would have become a tangled mess, and turn it into a modern bizarro masterpiece. While it lacks the raw insanity of House, it is obviously the vision of a man who knows exactly what he wants to express, and how he wants to express it, and that vision is sublime. Unfortunately, due to the limitations of time, budget, technology, etc, it is up to you as an audience member to take a step forward and meet the film halfway by taking the parts of that vision which are offered and completing it with your own mind and soul.
And yes, there are a fair number of titties.
I award this film 10 Severed Feet out of a possible 13.
