# Zardoz (1973)

### reviewed by
James Kendrick

    "ZARDOZ" (UK, 1974)
    A Film Review by James Kendrick
    * (out of ****)

Director: John Boorman || Screenplay: John Boorman || Stars: Sean Connery (Zed), Charlotte Rampling (Consuella), Sara Kestelman (May), Sally Anne Newton (Avalow), John Alderton (Friend), Niall Buggy (Zardoz/Arthur Frayn), Bosco Hogan (George Saden), Jessica Swift (Apathetic) || MPAA Rating: R

John Boorman's "Zardoz" is a goofy cinematic debacle so fundamentally misconceived and laughably executed that it takes on a bizarre enjoyment quality all its own. Not since the rampant bumblings of one Edward D. Wood Jr. has a movie been so silly and so serious at the same time.

Of course, Wood's career can be explained by two things: he had no money and he had no talent. Boorman, on the other hand, cannot court such excuses to explain "Zardoz" (or his follow-up film, the equally awful "Exorcist II: The Heretic"). Boorman obviously had a sizable budget, a matinee idol movie star (Sean Connery) in the lead role, and although you wouldn't know it from this film, Boorman does indeed have talent.

This is the man who made the slick modern masterpiece "Deliverance" (1972), as well as the autobiographical World War II drama "Hope and Glory" (1987), the slightly over-conceived Arthurian epic "Excalibur" (1981) and the father-son jungle adventure "The Emerald Forest" (1985). His films all show that Boorman is never lacking in imagination, but sometimes that comes at the cost of coherence and taste. If Boorman is anything, he's ambitious, and when he succeeds, it's in grand fashion. Unfortunately, the bigger they are, the harder they fall, and when Boorman falls, the resounding impact can be heard for miles around.

"Zardoz" is meant to takes its place among the grandest of mystical movies, an obsession of Boorman's. His screenplay tries to elicit the same mythological connotations of the Arthurian legends or even "The Wizard of Oz," a book which figures into the movie's plot. But, despite all this reaching, the resulting movie is more unintentionally funny than intentionally enigmatical or compelling.

The events take place in the distant year 2293, but there is little of the typical futuristic movie-ness to be found. In fact, things seems to have moved backwards, with people riding horses, shooting old-style guns, and living in large Victorian mansions. It's more Middle Ages than Space Age.

The world of "Zardoz" is divided into two distinct hemispheres: the Outlands, where all the poor, pathetic people live, and the Vortex, where a select group of wealthy intellectuals live in comfort and everlasting life. These Immortals never grow old, they never engage in sexual activity, they possess psychological powers, and they live in a sort of quasi-utopian Marxist society where everyone is equal, and everyone contributes equally to the society. However, if one breaks the rules, that person is punished by being aged so many years. If someone breaks the rules enough, he or she is aged to the point of senility, and imprisoned to an eternal existence in a geriatric home with others aged criminals.

One of the Immortals, Arthur Frayn (Niall Buggy ), a squirmy man with a mustache and goatee tattooed on his face, is charged with keeping order in the Outlands and forcing the residents to farm so the Immortals can be fed. Like "The Wizard of Oz," he adopts a god-like status among the people by flying in to their part of the world in a giant stone carved like a menacing head. (This flying head is one of the movie's opening images, and it's a dead giveaway of the lunacy to come.)

Calling himself Zardoz, Frayn gathers a bunch of Outlanders and makes them into a group called the Exterminators, whose purpose is to kill most of the other Outlanders so they can't procreate and take up more resources. From inside his giant, stone head, Zardoz bellows seriously laugh-inducting statements like, "The gun is good. The penis is evil." That line alone is worth the movie's cult following.

One day, an Exterminator named Zed (Sean Connery), sneaks into Zardoz's flying stone, pushes Frayn out, and goes back to the Vortex. Once there, the Immortals label him a "Brutal" and study him like a lab rat, taking great, perverse care in exploring his sexuality, which is a mystery to them. They seem especially interested in his ability to gain an erection, and there is one downright hilarious sequence where a bunch of scantily-clad female scientists show Zed erotic footage on a video screen in an attempt to determine what gets him worked up.

I say "hilarious" because that is exactly what "Zardoz" is. It is obvious that Boorman did not intend it to be so; he made this film with the straightest of faces, although I have a hard time believing that as production moved forward, he didn't get even the slightest inkling of how patently ridiculous it was becoming. Just looking at Connery is enough to give one the giggles - he spends most of the film running around in a red loin cloth that resembles a diaper, a mane of hair braided halfway down his back, a Wyatt Earp-style handlebar mustache, and a pair of thigh-high patent leather boots that would look more appropriate on a cheap Hollywood hooker.

Boorman made the film right after the critical and financial success of "Deliverance," which is the only reason I can imagine a studio would green-light this effort. He attracted some rich talent on both sides of the camera, including cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth ("2001"), whose striking visuals are about the only good thing in "Zardoz" besides the inadvertent humor. Sean Connery had made his last James Bond film in 1971, and perhaps he was looking for a change in pace. He got exactly that in "Zardoz," and it's a wonder it didn't end his career.

I'm sure Boorman intended for this movie to make some grand statements. Is it a treatise about the infallibility of eternal life? Is it a condemnation of those who consider growing old to be a bad thing? Or is it a social statement, something about the inherent negativity of class distinctions and the violence it creates? Karl Marx might like it if he were more like Timothy Leary. Come to think of it, maybe Boorman made it as an extended LSD trip. People high on illicit substances are the only ones I can imagine enjoying this asinine silliness as anything more than a completely unintentional comedy.

    ©1998 James Kendrick

Visit "Charlie Don't Surf!" an eclectic collection of film reviews by James Kendrick http://www.bigfoot.com/~jimkendrick || E-mail: jimkendrick@bigfoot.com

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