Zardoz
The remaining population of Earth has become divided between the Barbarians who roam the wastelands, violent, uneducated slavedrivers who force their captives to work the land to produce grain, and the Eternals who live protected lives of serenity, immortal intellectuals who consider the past and the world beyond their enclaves sealed behind force-fields as something to be studied but of no direct consequence other than the agriculture produced by the labour.
Vortex Four provided for by the Barbarians overseen by Arthur Frayn, a magician who has set himself up as the false god of the floating rock head Zardoz, he provides guns and ammunition to his chosen ones that they may enact his commands and control the land and has played a game with the executioner Zed, allowing him the benefit of education which has inspired him to rise up against his master, stowing away within the hollow idol and finding himself a caged curiosity, a stranger in a strange land where the only violence is negative thoughts.
Director John Boorman having hoped to adapt The Lord of the Rings, when that project did not progress he instead wrote Zardoz, a dystopian science fiction oddity released in 1974 starring Outland and Highlander’s Sean Connery as Zed, eager to set himself far from the role of James Bond which he had then played six times, with Charlotte Rampling and Sarah Kestelman as the Eternals Consuella and May, one cold and judgemental, the other a scientist, while Niall Buggy is Frayn, the jester who manipulates from behind the curtain.
Zed out of his element, while he is not afraid he can be alarmed, caught off guard, but he is a fast and subtle learner, the Eternals divided on whether he should be killed immediately or studied first that they may be able to re-learn certain evolutionary traits from the primitive which they have lost, the lifestyles of the two distinct societies having divided by the year 2293, small sacrifices for their ageless immortality, each individual rebirthed artificially should they die.
The presence of Zed prompting dissent between May and Consuella, the Vortex is democratic but that does not mean there is consensus in the hedonistic society which has found itself in decay, the endemic and paralysing indifference of immortality without challenge a threat to which more are succumbing, near-comatose individuals who must be cared for, the Apathetics cast-off remnants of people on the edge of society.
The bridge between the Barbarians and the Eternals, Zed has full reign of passions which might reignite a flame in those who have forgotten, but he also carries another gift, that of death with which he has been commanded to cleanse the Earth of “the plague of man,” Zardoz perhaps the strangest embodiment of the new age of science fiction literature which emerged in the late sixties and early seventies and unlike anything else produced at the time.
Derided and dismissed by contemporary critics, Zardoz is easy to sneer at yet Connery gives one of his best performances, never allowing himself to be defined by the costume, Zed a man who is presumed to be an inferior yet who has been given advantages over those who treat him as a servant, an object of entertainment and ridicule yet the chosen one of the false god who has gained knowledge of the lie which hide in plain sight, any element of camp confined strictly to John Alderton as the flirtatious Friend, disruptive in his own quiet way.
A singular film from the era in which Alejandro Jodorowsky hoped to bring Dune to the screen, it is a mix of mysticism and nihilism, Zed himself akin to the Kwisatz Haderach, his destiny shaped by unseen hands, wheels within wheels, while the divided society echoes the Eloi and Morlocks of The Time Machine and there is an influence of Barbarella in the costumes, mirrored mazes, layered visuals and the Apathetics, recalling the decaying exiles of the Labyrinth beneath Sogo.
The death cult of the Executioners a stylistic and thematic precursor to the idolatrous masks and purification rituals of the Necromongers of Chronicles of Riddick, a more recent echo might be found in Rumours where an enclave of the most powerful individuals in the world, isolated from the very people they are intended to represent, are thrown into chaos as they lose the power and control from which they alone have benefitted.
Given a 4K restoration supervised and approved by Boorman, Arrow’s currently out of print edition of Zardoz can be considered the definitive, offering a commentary from the director and a plethora of supporting interviews with Boorman, Kestelman, production designer Anthony Pratt, special effects creator Gerry Johnston, camera operator Peter MacDonald, assistant director Simon Relph, hair stylist Colin Jamison, production manager Seamus Byrne, assistant editor Alan Jones and an appreciation by Ben Wheatley.
