Oh, Zardoz, why do you have to be so awesome? Why couldn't you have been some generic glob of insipid cornmeal with no real nutritional value? Instead, you had to be a thoughtful romp, teeming with life-giving nectar. I'm telling ya, if I looked through my window right this minute and gazed upon a gigantic stone head floating above the bacteria-laden nail salon across the street, I guarantee I'd be out there in a nothing but red diaper bowing before your bouldery presence quicker than a nonspecific superhero whose main superpower is the ability to move really fast 'n' stuff. What can I say? That's the effect this movie had on me. Now, I realize it doesn't take much to get me to frolic inappropriately in public, but I loved the ill-conceived choices that are made in this film. Everything from the aforementioned diapers to the chromatic flakiness were transmitted with courageous aplomb. It was almost if writer-director John Boorman was extracting pure, uncut crazy thoughts directly from his cerebral cortex in a random, go for broke fashion. Because let's get real, it takes a whole lotta gumption to conceive a film like this. Zardoz tells the story of Zed, a hirsute exterminator, who, along with his fellow exterminators, does the bidding of a floating head named–you guessed it–Zardoz. The giant godhead spits guns and rifles from its mouth and tells the scantily clad warriors, in a low, booming voice, to kill all those who dare to breed. You see, those who use their penises (and vaginas, I presume) for non-recreational purposes are deemed 'Brutals' and must eradicated on site.
One day, while taking a break from killing people, Zed ventures off on his own and ends up in The Vortex, a pastoral wonderland, where a community of highly evolved humans have somehow managed to conquer death. Zed fascinates the eternal throng at first, but some grow to suspect the uncivilized outsider; as his thirst for knowledge begins to threaten their makeshift utopia.
A ponytail-sporting Sean Connery is at the top of his game as Zed. In fact, I think this is the only movie of his that I've enjoyed on a number of different levels. The thigh-high boots and red diaper with matching bandoleer may look ridiculous, but Connery makes the skimpy outfit his own personal chew toy after only five minutes.
Whether he's pulling a bread wagon, fleeing a crazed Charlotte Rampling in a wedding dress, or molesting the right breast of a mousy woman pullulating with apathy, Sean imbues the shaggy barbarian with a refined, yet musky stench. There's moment late in the film when Zed instructs a ragtag group of followers to "Stay behind my aura!" that made me say to myself: This is my kind of movie. What can I say? Grown men who refer to their auras in a surefooted manner are pretty hot in my book. Having a thick patch of chest hair (the kind that can frighten small woodland creatures) doesn't hurt, either.
On a more feminine tip, Sara Kestelman's aggravated attractiveness and alluring, elf-like mystical qualities were downright captivating as May, a Vortex dweller who takes an interest in Zed's memories. Her freckled visage and trance-like posture was a nice counterbalance to Connery's oafishness. The scene where May and Zed congregate underneath a diaphanous head covering was quite erotic...in a slightly androgynous, nonlethal way....
No comments:
Post a Comment