Zardoz

Ed note: Please welcome Rachel J. Cox to the blog. We're resurrecting the old "TLA Rewind" brandname for her regular insights into classics that are languishing on the dustier shelves of our video stores.

(1974, 105 min) Last week I watched Zardoz, the latest in a long series of post-apocalyptic movies from the '70s that I have enjoyed. Why are they so great? More specifically, why are they so much greater than the post-apocalyptic movies from oh, say… every other decade? Were those ten years really so bleak and full of despair? Disco was dying, and perhaps in the hearts and minds of an entire generation the earth was, too.

Let me start by saying that I will watch or read anything that is set in the future…anything. I openly admit that there is little uncharted territory left when it comes to the "speculative fiction" genre (the hot, smarter cousin of the science fiction genre). Alfonso Cuaron's Children of Men was the most unique vision of the future to come out in years, but of course it was based on a novel from 1992 and greatly diverged from the original storyline. (We can immediately dismiss A.I. as having any original content; it might as well have been titled Pinocchio 2001.) Nevertheless, I personally find any creative work of speculative/post-apocalyptic/dystopian/science fiction worth watching.

Although today it has achieved a cult status, Zardoz was hailed as both a failure and a joke when first released in 1974. It was written and directed by John Boorman, a notoriously uneven director, right after his critical and commercial success with Deliverance. The two endeavors at first glance seem disparate, but both films utilize the ideas of societal breakdown and emotional detachment as central themes.

Zardoz is most often criticized for its low production values. The larger sets are comprised of minimally altered pastoral farmland and country estates, while the interior scenes are typical campy sci-fi fare: rooms draped in fabric, a maze of mirrors, props constructed of papier mache. The colorful and somewhat comical costumes could have come from a child's collection of play clothes. These meager surroundings completely escaped my notice, perhaps because I look at all special effects before Terminator 2 as pathetic but well-meaning. Nice try, I think, but that is clearly rubber. Although the visual techniques of Star Wars were groundbreaking at the time, today they have been far surpassed and the film barely stands apart from its peers Flash Gordon and Tron. To me, Zardoz seems appropriately dated and its simplicity intentional, as it fits in with the desolate scenario.

In the year 2293 the world is populated by pockets of Eternals, highly evolved humans who have achieved immortality and shed themselves of the more animalistic qualities of their ancestors. They have little to no interaction with Brutals, the unevolved humans that live like scavengers in the wasteland outside the Eternals’ protected enclaves. The main character, Zed, is played by Sean Connery and wears a red loincloth throughout most of the picture. (He also has a long braid, and both are mildly distracting at first. This is post-James Bond, people. He wasn't a spring chicken then, either.) Zed belongs to a warrior class that exterminates Brutals at random and has recently forced them to begin farming, at the behest of a giant, flying stone head known as the idol Zardoz. The film opens with Zed meeting his god and actually manages to get more interesting.

This is all I will give away of the plot, since most of the pleasure of watching Zardoz comes from the deliberately paced developments regarding Zed’s background and intentions. Like many science fiction films of its generation, Zardoz attempts to tackle some important questions about the nature of religion and the extent of its power. In Beneath the Planet of the Apes the apes worship a nuclear bomb and in Logan's Run the religious ceremony known as Carousel falsely promises resurrection.

I won't say that Zardoz blew my mind, that it made complete sense from start to finish, or that the denouement takes place in a timely fashion. I will say that it is inventive, unique and thought-provoking. Certain people will enjoy the random female toplessness, while almost no one will enjoy the loincloth.

And that's all that anybody can really want from a movie.

– Rachel J. Cox

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