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103 of 109 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Greatly rewatchable. Interesting for flaws and brilliance, March 29, 2005
`Zardoz' was produced, written, and directed by John Boorman who, like Robert Altman (`M.A.S.H') and Ken Russell (`Women In Love') cash in their credit earned from directing very successful commercial films and spend it to direct very personal, very original, and very uncommercial films. `Zardoz' was made right after Boorman's immense critical and commercial success with `Deliverance' and his star in that movie, Burt Reynolds, was to play the lead role in `Zardoz' until Burt fell ill and was replaced with Sean Connery at a cost of 1/5 of the whole million dollar budget. As high as that relative figure may seem, apparently Connery was just finishing up his appearances as James Bond and no one would hire him for anything else, so he needed the money.
While there is a great danger that no one will ever read this review, it is immense fun to write a review of this rich, quirky, and very flawed movie. For starters, I find it easy to see that people have a hard time understanding the movie. I have never held that fact alone against a movie, as it took me at least three viewings of `2001 A Space Odyssey' to feel I was anywhere near understanding it, and `2001' has taken its rightful place among the very best American movies. It has taken me at least that many viewings to understand some of Fredrico Fellini's movies and I still don't understand `8½'. But that doesn't mean this is not a great movie. But that doesn't mean this is a great movie. It only means it has potential the fact that it can still be found on the store shelves is a testament to the fact that this movie has a lot to offer, even if it ultimately does not fully realize the filmmaker's vision.
There are few movies I have seen which are more in need of the director's commentary than this one. One of Boorman's most telling observations on this commentary is the statement that there may just be too much being attempted in this movie. And, I think this summarizes the problem in a nutshell.
Like all true science fiction works, the heart of `Zardoz' is to set the stage by imagining `what would happen if this statement were true'? The central premise of the movie is the fact that some cataclysm destroyed the world as we know it and, not unlike H. G. Wells' `The Time Machine', humankind has split into two major subspecies, one of which is effectively immortal and the other barely survives on a subsistence level and who treat an artifact of the immortals as a god named `Zardoz'. In addition to being immortal, the higher level beings can communicate telepathically and can control lower level beings by the force of mind alone.
Some of the implications the filmmaker draws from this central premise are truly inspired. By far the most brilliant is the inference that the immortals can suffer from debilitating boredom. To imagine how easy this can happen, just imagine a conventional image of heaven where the primary activities are singing and playing an archaic musical instrument.
Another inspired implication is the fact that the immortals are punished by being aged a certain number of years, so that when they are treated to restore their youth, they never grow any younger than their penal age. These two implications lead to two subgroups. These are immortals who become totally immobilized by ennui and immortals who age to the point of debilitation. If the movie stopped there, it could probably have easily filled its two hours with a rich explication of all these suppositions.
The problem is that to make the story interesting, the storyteller must bring a mortal into the immortals' world to shake things up. The problem I have with the device Boorman uses to bring Connery's mortal character into the immortals' world really doesn't seem to work very well. This element of the story all revolves around the premise that the mortals are being suppressed by a myth based on the story of the Wizard of Oz. This myth is so central to the story that the title of the movie and the name of the deity itself comes from a contraction of `wiZARD of OZ'. Connery's character, `Zed', with the help of his fellow mortal `brutals' manages to get aboard the great stone head which embodies Zardoz' after Zed discovers the fact that the great and mighty `Zardoz' is, like the fictional wizard, a sham. My biggest problem is that the analogy between this future earth and the Land of Oz is very, very thin. There is no explanation I can fathom for why the mortals are divided into two classes, one of which, the `brutals' like Zed spend all their time, catching, raping, and killing the other mortal class. This situation remits somewhat when we see the brutals acting as overseers while the other mortals spend time planting crops, but this subplot is simply not very well developed.
The primary thread of the story is in the contention between two immortals over what to do with Zed. The `scientist' who wishes to study Zed wins a vote to keep him alive for 21 days. In the course of this period, Zed manages to stir up the world of the immortals and do a lot to bring some real interest to their life.
As the movie was done very cheaply in the early 1970's, today's computer based effects simply did not exist and the `on camera' effects are a bit threadbare, not unlike the curtain behind which the Midwestern huckster manipulates the image of the Wizard of Oz. And yet this does not detract from the movie. The film mostly suffers from too much implausibility and, to paraphrase the Austrian Emperor's comments on Mozart's music in `Amadeus', there are `simply too many ideas'.
An yet, this is a really worthwhile movie to see, enhanced by medieval music expert David Munro's score.
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19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Beware of the Flying Head of Fake God! , December 9, 2005
Director John Boorman has delivered some very good films such as "Deliverance" (1972), "Excalibur" (1981) and "The Emerald Forest" (1985).
"Zardoz" (1974) occupies a very special place in his filmography. As Boorman also wrote the screenplay, we may assume it is a "film d'auter". He not only conveys a sci-fi story, he also gives the viewer a parable about power and immortality.
The whole movie has the look and feel of mid `70s cosmovision. Daily life in the Vortex resembles a Hippie community; there are scenes with kaleidoscopic effects (Ken Russell will use very similar images in "Altered States" (1980)); scenes of mass killing are shown with minimal blood effusion and so on.
The story is a classical sci-fi argument: in far future humankind is fractioned in two groups. One group lives in an edenic valley, profits from immortality and suffers no material needs. The other, by far the hugest group, dwells in a destitute Earth subject to the persecution of the Brutals.
Brutals are servers of god Zardoz, an enormous flying and speaking stone head. Their religion promises eternal after-life at the Vortex. Zed, one of them, decides to creep into Zardoz's head and starts a "heroes' journey" of discovery, enlightenment and trial.
From there on a complex plot, requiring viewer's attention is deployed.
There are several high points in this film.
Cinematography directed by multi-Oscar awarded Geoffrey Unsworth ("Cabaret" (1972) and "Tess" (1979)) is delicate, portraying slender and beautiful women bodies. He uses color and texture (especially cloth texture) masterfully. The film has received a BAFTA nomination to Best Cinematography.
Playacting shows a young, beautiful and stylized Charlotte Rampling impersonating Consuella, a sensitive Eternals' leader opposing Zed. Sara Kestelman as May, in her first movie role, insinuates an attractive personality. Last but not least Sean Connery fleshes Zed gallantly; we must remember that, at that time, he was vigorously trying to detach himself from his alter ego: James Bond.
It is a good sci-fi movie for sophisticated audience!
Reviewed by Max Yofre.
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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A 70s relic that remains surprisingly relevant., April 6, 2001
The big surprise for me was not just rediscovering "Zardoz" after all these years -- now back to the land of the living in a fine 16x9 DVD edition -- but to find that it was a far better, more interesting movie than I had remembered. I grew up with "Zardoz" appearing on TV in a badly-edited form about once a year, and my brother and I would frequently drop everything to catch it. We didn't know what the hell it was about, but it was fascinating nonetheless. Here, reissued, it's dated only in some superficial ways (the costumes, etc.). The underlying story has, if anything, only gotten better with time.In the year 2273, the world has collapsed. The world is divided between the Eternals, who live forever inside protected utopian communies, and the Brutals, who squabble for what little existence can be had in the lands outside. Some of the Brutals have been raised up and appointed "Exterminators," charged with the task of keeping the Brutals in line. The object of their worshop and the source of their instructions is a giant stone head they call Zardoz (hence the title.) One of the Exterminators, Zed (Connery), stows away in the head one day to find out where it goes, and winds up inside one of the protected communes. The Eternals there are fascinated and repulsed by him at the same time, probably because he represents all the things they neither have nor can achieve (such as sexual potency and mortality -- and the two are intimately related, the movie argues). Slowly he reveals his true reasons for coming within their fold, and then chaos erupts. That's the basics of the plot; any more than that would ruin some of the movie's more interesting secrets, which really should not be given away carelessly out of respect for the audience. The movie's mostly infamous now for being that weird SF story where Connery ran around in a red diaper, but underneath the surface is a smarter and more philosophically astute film that most people would give it credit for. Don't let the production devices distract you. "Zardoz" is also interesting as being a product of a very short period of Hollywood's history when experimental, risky productions were financed with great zeal. Many of those movies were terrible duds -- anyone here remember "Futz!", "The End of the Road," "The Final Programme," "The Monitors," or "Glen and Randa"? Not surprisingly, a great many of these movies were post-apocalyptic SF headtrips, but "Zardoz" was probably the king and emperor of the bunch. And still is.
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