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Maybe this has been talked about 1000 times, but the mythos of Zardoz has always fascinated me. I have heard a few takes on the film, but one thing has always been consistent: No one seems to know what is going on when they talk about the film. Even the director added in narration at the beginning of the film to explain (sort of) what was to unfold throughout the film to help confused audience members come away with more than a look of confusion and an empty popcorn container. I am not saying a lot isn't going on, it certainly is, but I walked away with a pretty good idea of what the director was trying to say. I get it. I am more confused by the comments stating otherwise: it's not that complex if you break it down. The film is fairly linear (my first surprise), with a lot of invented mythology and terms created like any decent 70-80s sci fi flick. Most discussions I have seen go something like this: "What's Zardoz about? I have no idea. By any measure of logic, it makes absolutely no sense..... The protagonist of Zardoz is named Zed. He's an angry dork living in a world of savage loin-cloth-wearing Brutals. One day, curious Zed stows away inside a floating head and gets transported to the Vortex, a Santa Monica-like paradise on Earth, whose inhabitants are called Eternals and who never die. It is they who have created his god Zardoz. The women of the Vortex look very much like Charlotte Rampling, and they treat Zed as their pet and science experiment, humiliating him turn by turn. A hundred pages later, Zed learns to fight back, in the end destroying the Eternals paradise and replacing it with a pockmarked ruined land not unlike New Jersey. The novel, steeped in the ethos of the early '70s, seems to think this is a happy turn of events." This is a bad summary and inaccurate to boot. Zardoz makes a good amount of sense, but, more accurately, not every part of the world John Boorman created is fleshed out. I had avoided the film for as long as I could, thinking I would have to endure a nonsensical 70s drug trip and Connery's crotch for almost two hours if I gave into temptation, and, well... I was right about one of those things. The plot is very similar to say, Battlestar Galactica and The Time Machine(yay), in a lot of ways, with a bit of Battlefield Earth (boo), and a nice, creepy Bioshock vibe as well. It's well shot, well acted, and some of the scenes are gorgeous to look at (Ireland looks nice on screen) With watching it only once with no other commentary or basic explanation, this my plot summary: In the future, the world is dying of a self imposed cataclysm. Man has become too plentiful and the planet can no longer support the population. The smartest scientists (and their kids) get together and create force field protected safe zones called Vortexes; wherein they plan to live together in peace, harmony, and plenty, as well as protect the human race and its accumulated knowledge. They plan to continue to advance science and unravel the mysteries of the universe within the safety of the Vortex. The film alludes to the fact that there are lots of Vortexes around the world, but they are never shown. The scientists know they can no longer be allowed to breed (thus recreating the same overpopulation problem), so they invent a crystalline computer that can store an infinite amount of data as light beams (or light refractions). They call it the Tabernacle. The Tabernacle binds the community together psychically through a crystal implanted in each of their foreheads, and they are all given a crystal ring to wear which allows them to speak to the Tabernacle so it can answer any questions they have. It is not fully explained if the Tabernacle controls all Vortexes or there is one for each Vortex, unless I missed something. The Tabernacle also serves one other important function: it keeps the community at a static (young) age, and when anyone dies for any reason, it simply resurrects them (as a baby in a plastic bag until they are fully grown with all of their memories intact). This community come to be known as the Eternals. They are given (or either develop through science) the ability of psychic communication and telekinesis. They also do some other weird backwards talking that is never fully explained and eat plants that somehow boost their abilities. They become powerful enough to kill each other with a look, but any violence is forbidden. As a final safeguard, the scientists have the Tabernacle wipe out the information about its creation, how it works and how to destroy it, and even erase it from the minds of all of the Eternals. Thus the Eternals begin their blissful life of safety behind the force field. This seems to work well for a few hundred years, but the adults don't take to immortality (as they are older than the children and had expected to die at some point) and they basically go insane. They break off of the group and are banished to a section of the Vortex and renamed the Renegades. They live in some sort of eternal 1920-esque New Years Eve party. Which makes sense if this was set in 1970, but it's well in our future, so it's confusing. Their children adapt better to being deathless, but immortality slowly takes its toll and even they start slipping into apathy, one by one: a state where you stop moving or responding, and just stare into nothingness all day long. These are called the Apathetics. The community doesn't want them to starve to death (although it wouldn't matter, they would just be resurrected), but having a heart, they feed them regularly (as they do the Renegades) to keep them from continually dying, and stow the less dangerous Apathetics in a barn. As part of the whole Tabernacle/Vortex project, the Eternals are forced harden their hearts to the suffering of the outside world. No one really wants to deal with the millions of people staving to death, locked outside of the Vortexes, begging for help, but they must turn their eye to a growing problem: the Outlanders (people who live outside the force field). One man takes on the job: Arthur Frayn, one of the Eternals, and a notorious trickster/magician. The others don't seem to care how he deals with problem, so no one asks any questions. His master plan is to create a giant floating head (it's a spaceship he called Zardoz) that serves as the "god" to a group of men dubbed the Brutals. It vomits guns/bullets out of its mouth and tells them that killing is good and breeding is bad (it forbids sex as it would just create more people to deal with). Arthur creates a religion made up of brutal fanatics who ride around on horses with machine guns and just kill everyone they meet, thus lowering the population and in an attempt to end their suffering. Again, I assume people are still breeding and making a living where they can. The Brutals are specifically created to combat this attempt to continue life outside of the Vortexes and allow the Earth to heal itself. That works for while, but there is still the issue of the 'perfect' Eternals slowly going mad. After hundreds of years of living, and failing to unravel the mysteries of the universe (even with space travel), they hit a hard wall of knowledge. They have nothing to do, nothing is left to discover. They know everything and are simply just surviving. As hyper-intelligent beings, this takes a heavy toll. Psychic violence is growing, and eventually you just become a Renegade or a Apathetic. They try to combat any 'crime' with 'aging' the offender, basically adding years to their life so they are no longer young and beautiful, but nothing solves the growing problems. They all know they are doomed to live in eternal madness. (I am not sure how they know everything, and can't re figure out how to disable the Tabernacle, unless it is constantly erasing their memories and/or blocking knowledge of its inner workings.) Not wanting this to happen, Arthur hatches a new plan with the help of another Eternal named Friend. At first, before the apathy was widespread, the Eternals just needed to deal with the growing problem of the Apathetics and Renegades. Arthur re-purposes Zardoz to have the Brutals stop killing people and start using them as farmers to make wheat. The Eternals grow all of their own food, but as more and more slip into madness, the workforce needs a boost. Zardoz comes and collects the wheat after it is harvested and takes it back to the Vortex to make bread for the Renegades and Apathetics. This lasts for a while, but the Eternals all know, deep down, they are going to end up completely bonkers, and only solution is a return to mortality. The men in the Vortex have, over hundreds of years, lost the ability to get aroused, so Arthur must look outside of the Vortex to the Brutals. Arthur begins selectively breeding Brutals with Eternals (you can see the men and women encased in some sort of stasis field in his stone head spaceship) to produce a hyper intelligence, yet violent group of men who can destroy the Tabernacle. He uses Zardoz to tell them that now, specially chosen Brutals can breed with females. Over time, Arthur creates a group of mutants, even more intelligent than the Eternals, yet with human fear, anger, brutality, sex drives, etc etc. The year is now 2293. The breeding is now complete, and Arthur chooses a Brutal mutant named Zed (Sean Connery), teaching him the truth about the world. Arthur leads Zed to a library when he teaches him to read. Zed reads thousands of books and becomes extremely intelligent. He stumbles upon a book called the Wizard of Oz. WiZard-Oz. Zardoz. (It's not that shocking) Zed figures out that Zardoz is simply a man behind a curtain, hiding behind a big head, and they have all been betrayed. They aren't serving a god, they are simply killing each other to keep the Eternals safe and well fed. He has been turned into a psychotic and brutal murderer/rapist at the whim of a trickster. Zed wants revenge, just as Arthur knows he will. Zed plots with the other mutant Brutals and decides to hide in the harvested wheat that was placed inside Zardoz's mouth in order to find out where the 'god' goes. This allows Zed to kill Arthur inside the ship, bypass the force field, and enter the Vortex. The Eternals are confused by Zed's arrival and as to the whereabouts of Authur; they are worried he will hurt the Vortex, and some want to kill him quickly. One scientist, named May, wants to study him and find out what happened to Arthur. They vote and give her a few weeks to conduct her work. May analyses Zed's DNA and, over the course of a few weeks, the Eternals begin to timidly interact with Zed. Friend (the Eternal in cahoots with Arthur) takes charge of him and shows him around, giving him information on the Renegades, the Apathetics, and their plight. He does this in a cruel way, humiliating Zed, to make Zed even more determined to destroy them all. This is, deep down, what they all desperately want. The main person in opposition to having Zed there is Consuella (sic), an Eternal who wants to protect the Vortex and sees Zed as a threat who must be killed immediately. The rest of the Eternals seem amused by him, and consider him basically an animal to play with. May finds out Zed is actually a mutant, and very powerful psychically, even more so than any Eternal. She finds out Zed is there in a plot to wipe them all out, as revenge for what Arthur/the Eternals did to humanity. Again, she secretly longs for death, so she hides this from the others and works to keep him alive for 'more tests'. Zed meets up with the Renegades and tries to glean any knowledge of the Tabernacle from the insane scientists; he finds little success. Zed's violent psychic aura infects the more innocent Eternals and they all become akin to Brutals, and try to hunt him down and kill him in a rage. Zed escapes and meets up with Arthur (now resurrected and in hiding) and Friend. They take him to a safe place and explain their secret plot, and that they want him to do them all in. He is happy to oblige. The 'touch teach' him all of their knowledge to help him fight the Tabernacle. When he is ready, Zed faces off with the computer and gets trapped inside as it tries to defend itself. He meets himself in a hall of mirrors and kills his reflection, becoming trapped in the now dying computer. Consuella, now in love with Zed for some reason, psychically revives his body and Zed now goes full super-solder mode, using his aura to combat the infected, raging Eternals. He manages to open the force field, letting in the mutant Brutals, who have been waiting outside. They start killing everyone, although, this time, their victims are running towards them, begging for sweet death. Zed grabs Consuella and takes her to the crashed spaceship, Zardoz. They take up residence in its mouth cave and eventually have a child who grows up and leaves to (seemingly) restart humanity anew; a blend of mortal emotional human, and peaceful psychic genius. I am not saying it's good or bad, but I enjoyed it and enjoyed working out the insanity of it all. It comes together in the end, and for the most part, makes logical sense. A lot of ideas are explored, some going nowhere (what is that leaf he eats all about?!), but any important plot device is understandable as long as you fit it all together. It was fun to expect this savage to go bonkers and start killing everyone at the drop of a hat, but then watching him just stoically take all the abuse, and then find out he is super intelligent and slowly considering his options on how to massacre the Vortex. Even Consuella's love for Zed can be explained. There is a scene where she is running an experiment with Zed. Since no Eternal can become aroused, and Brutals can, she sets up stimuli to see what arouses Zed. Nothing works until she turns off the projector and he becomes aroused simply looking at her. I imagine since no man ever became aroused looking at her, this is quite shocking, as no Eternal sees themselves as sexually attractive. She considers the act of sex to be abasing and violent towards women (because it had been for so many years before the Vortexes), but she changes her attitude because 1970s logic. Actually, it's probably due to being somewhat flattered as being seen as desirable in that way, and the desire to return to 'normal' life on earth fraught with mortality, emotions, sex, and death. Plus they needed to get to baby making as her entire life goal was to protect the human race and it's knowledge and the Tabernacle is gone. It was actually way better than I thought it was going to be. 4/5 So, this is written without any deep study of the film, commentaries, etc... if anyone has any corrections or anything to add, I would love to hear it.
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Feb 24, 2015 19:37
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 04:20 |
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InfiniteZero posted:You forgot to mention that the penis is evil. Zardoz would hate Tom Cruise in Magnolia
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Feb 24, 2015 20:44
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LORD OF BUTT posted:The thing about Zardoz is, yeah, the message is pretty easy to get, but it's still a loving insane movie. Agreed, I am sad I waited so long to see it, it's actually a lot of fun, the insanity makes it interesting. If it was told in any other way, it would probably be dreadfully boring.
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Feb 24, 2015 21:23
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I said come in! posted:So I just went and watched this, and it was a real good movie. The part about Authur at the beginning and how he explains the story and who he is was interesting to me. It was real clever when it was then revealed what he based his inspiration of Zardoz on. I also liked how the immortal humans are living in this utopia but there is this conflict between its citizens about that utopia. For some of them it's a distopia because they are immortal. There was a lot of interesting commentary about sex as well, the way Zed views sex, and how the immortal humans view it and can't have sex because of their immortality. The overall plot is easy to get, but you can tell there are a lot of complex messages about society and what it means to be human that is being talked about in this movie. There are a lot of layers to this that would require a few watches and a lot of additional reading on the side to understand it all. I am glad you liked it. Yeah, I really think another viewing would eek out more of the subplots. There are a few things I was still confused about, but I bet they become clearer after a few watches... and it's just insane enough to be enjoyable multiple times. That was one of the best things, how they basically trapped themselves in hell and didn't even know it, and then, they all had to act like it was this great and wonderful thing, but Zed knew. Zed knew. Zed and Zardoz's chosen ones are the Exterminators and the rest of the people outside the Vortex are the Brutals. Zardoz literally says that he "raised them from Brutality". This is a better definition of what and who the mutants are. You are right, I heard a few terms, actually, and thought everyone was an Outlander, and the killers were Brutals, but I forgot about the Exterminators. Also, they had to stop killing and it made them really mad. That was humorous. I didn't pick up the point of the bodies in the stone head as being Eternals, but Brutals that have been sacrificed to Zardoz for human biomass to continue the regeneration of the Eternals. Essentially, they get tossed into that room of the human bodies floating in the walls and create new bodies for the Eternals when they die. This was a guess on my part, inferred by the breeding. Why have a bunch of random people in your ship in stasis? Also, how did he make Zed a superman without the DNA of Eternals? I have no idea if I am right, but think about this: Arthur could be using Apethetics for Brutals to rape to make more powerful men. THINK ABOUT THAT...it's dark... May doesn't want to die (or at least, not like the majority of the Eternals in the Vortex) but wants to end the reproduction ban as to end the stagnation and introduce new ideas in the Vortex by bearing subsequent generations. She is the one most fascinated by Zed when he comes into the Vortex, since he is the new superman that eclipses their own power. She and her small group escape destruction, impregnated by Zed's seed and carrying the Tabernacle so they can keep the knowledge of humanity, but without being confined by the limits of the Vortex and hopefully be a boon to all humanity. Again, I forgot, after touch teaching he slept with all of them... you are right. Everything done by Eternals was very purposeful, so it was jarring. The way they discussed everything was so matter of fact. Kill this guy, how do we get our men aroused again after years of flaccidity, let's meditate at the dinner table... it's like man... crazy weird and interesting. This is the essence of the movie. The story is pretty straightforward sci-fi if you break it down to the level of basic plot points, it's just that all the details surrounding the plot are wacky as hell. Sean Connery in a red diaper, flying stone heads vomiting guns and giving speeches about the evil of the dick, that dude with the beard drawn on his face with a Sharpie wearing a pair of blue silk boxer shorts on his head, the apathetic woman Sean Connery shot-puts into a pile of hay, the video presentation on how boners work, psychic attack with jazz hands... and that's just the stuff that I remember off the top of my head. What is funny is that I heard it was harder to get Sean in the wedding dress than it was in the red diaper... 
ZenMaster fucked around with this message at 16:32 on Feb 25, 2015 |
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Feb 25, 2015 16:29
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Feb 25, 2015 16:30
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Young Freud posted:The best shot: the Eternals playing around in their Eden while the Brutals in their drab hand-me-down clothes, backed by a smoggy backdrop, beat on the Vortex shield walls. The children...  I have never seen THX-1138, and now I really want to.
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Feb 26, 2015 16:49
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 04:20 |
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Now I regret not having archives... I agree, it's not nonsensical, it's weird. And people start to watch it, and once the head flies in and Connery shows up and shoots the audience in the face, they sort of check out. What has American cinema become? Truly, Michael Bay IS Arthur Frayn.
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Feb 27, 2015 08:37
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