Serbian essayist Zoran Živković, known as one of the most enthusiastic promoters of science fiction in the former Yugoslavia, claimed that the period from 1967 to 1977 represented the golden age of science fiction cinema. Many cinephiles would agree with this. In those times there weren’t breathtaking special effects nor “cool” protagonists in leather jackets, but the genre was at least interesting to respectable and art-oriented filmmakers who took it seriously and tried to explore the future of humanity in their works. Not all their efforts bore fruit, but their failures were generally more interesting than most of what is served to us as science fiction today. Zardoz, the 1974 film written, directed and produced by John Boorman, is one such example. It failed upon release, only to enjoy a minor cult status today.
The plot of the film takes place in 2293 when the world is divided into two groups. On one side, genetic engineering has created immortal “Eternals” who enjoy the benefits of culture and superior technology behind the walls of their seemingly utopian refuges. The outside world is inhabited by mortal “Brutals” – impoverished wretches whose population growth is regulated by the Exterminators, who commit pillage and murder. They are controlled by Arthur Frayn (played by Niall Buggy), an Eternal who uses a flying statue to roam the world, presenting himself as the god Zardoz. This ends when Zed (played by Sean Connery), an Exterminator who dared to doubt the official truth, hides in the flying statue, kills Frayn and reaches the Eternal’s community. There he becomes the subject of attention for the Eternals, especially the scientist May (played by Sarah Kestelman) who wants to study him, while Consuelo (played by Charlotte Rampling) fears that the presence of such a savage will destroy the community. Zed eventually realises that utopia has a dark side – those Eternals who make trouble are turned into senile fools by punishment, and a good portion of Eternals have become so bored by life that they have turned towards apathy and catatonia. But the most visible consequence of immortality is the gradual loss of the sex drive among Eternals, and this is something that would be reawakened with the arrival of the masculine Zed.
Zardoz was made in Ireland after Boorman’s abandoned attempt to adapt Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings to the screen. It had a very interesting idea, and Boorman in his script made a genuine effort to explore the whole concept of immortality with all its consequences. Unfortunately, the script, no matter how interesting and intelligent it may be, couldn’t compensate for one banal fact. Zardoz had a budget of barely a million US dollars, which even in the 1970s was ridiculously low for such an ambitious project. This is reflected in special effects that could be charitably described as underwhelming – a supercomputer that appears in the form of pieces of glass, virtual reality that looks like a mirror room in an amusement park, and a futuristic high-tech colony that is little too similar to a 19th-century Irish country estate. This will make some viewers laugh, while others might be discouraged by Boorman’s “poetic” directing style. On the other hand, Zardoz is also a good example of the freedom that filmmakers had in the 1970s. Today, for example, it’s hard to imagine a film whose hero is a murderer and rapist, while the actual massacre represents a happy ending. Some of today’s female viewers, on the other hand, would be entertained by the sight of the 43-year-old Connery spending almost the entire film dressed in something resembling red diapers, while male viewers probably won’t complain about scenes in which Sarah Kestelman and Sally Anne Newton appear even without those superfluous fashion details. Because of all that, Zardoz, regardless of all its flaws, is a film that, no matter what you think of it, you will have a hard time forgetting and which should be recommended to serious cinephiles.
RATING: 5/10 (++)
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