Something strange happened in the 1970s. Movies became stranger than they ever had before. Stranger and grander in scale. John Boorman's 'Zardoz' is one of the strangest... And when I say strange, I don't mean bad strange. It's quite brilliant. But I can see how many going to see the latest science fiction film starring Sean Connery from the maker of 'Deliverance' might have been... confused. It isn't normal.
I first encountered the film through reading the novelisation. A book I have sadly lost because I'd love to read it again. I was very young and yet the ideas flowing through the book fascinated me. This was a completely alien world but it was also our world in the far far future. As in HG Wells' 'The Time Machine', civilisation has divided itself into groups. The Brutals are the population control policemen dictated to by the God Zardoz to 'go forth and kill!'. But Zardoz is controlled by the Eternals, a slightly bored set of highly intelligent people who communicate in bizarre ways. The great danger for eternals is that they might disintegrate into apathy or senility.
Sean Connery plays an agent of death. A Brutal who infiltrates Eternal society to break the status quo but he finds truths that shake the very foundations of his existence.
In the original film, Beethoven's Seventh features heavily on the soundtrack assisted by David Munrow's more experimental sounds. Boorman wrote and directed the film and the photography was by Geoffrey Unsworth. I remember looking at the vistas shot in Ireland and being blown away by them. Don't even get me started on the giant head which, for me, is one of the most creative and uncanny visions in the history of the cinema. At the time of its release, there were Sunday supplement articles on the film illustrated with frozen naked bodies. So many visions have remained with me over the years. During the prevalence of realism in the 80s, I remember seeing a screening of the film where the audience had clearly gone to mock and jeer and I found this deeply depressing. 'Zardoz' still remains with me to this day as a vision of the cinema at its biggest and most experimental.
Music: Mayan Ritual by Jimena Contreras
#zardoz #johnboorman #seanconnery #sciencefictionfilms #70scinema #britishsciencefiction #sciencefiction #future #satire
6 июн 2024
