Jay Rohr
Zardoz is a curious blunder. An excellent cast helping to illuminate highbrow sci-fi metaphors about myriad social subjects, helmed by a successful director, all the ingredients are there for something epic. It could have been as meaningful as any Dune or Logan’s Run. However, it ended up a critical and box office flop, relegated to the realm of comical catastrophes admired ironically. Yet, Zardoz has endured for fifty years.
It’s the story of Zed played by the legendary Sean Connery. In the distant future 2293, an irradiated wasteland is peopled by those known as the Brutals. This toiling populace composed of the bungled and botched are violently policed by Exterminators acting at the behest of Zardoz. This enigmatic being occasionally manifests as a floating stone head that disgorges firearms while commanding its followers to kill. However, when Zed is enlightened, he soon discovers there is another society. The Eternals, who inhabit the impenetrable Vortex, are immortals without a care in the world. All their needs met by miraculous machinery they have nothing in common with the struggling Brutals save a shared ancestry. But the introduction of Zed causes ripples that threaten to undo their faux utopia, perhaps for the best.
Despite the thickness of that paragraph, this is a simple synopsis. As such, it doesn’t paint the full scope of director John Boorman’s ambitious picture. Although Zardoz immediately seems to have themes already seen in many films, it’s a curious product of its own time. In that respect, the movie not only shows us the significance of contemporizing themes, especially as they persist despite progress, but the way that art can be overstuffed.
Zardoz almost aims at being psychedelic social commentary. It “exemplifies that strand of early Seventies countercultural thinking that challenged the hypermodernist vision that drove both US capitalism and Soviet state socialism.” Cinematically, scenes occasionally echo more acid driven flicks such as Head (1968) or the works of Alejandro Jodorowsky.
Unlike more experimental filmmakers, though, such as Jordan Belson or Storm de Hirsch, the woman who made movies without a camera, director John Boorman never fully dives into abstraction. His aim seems to be touching the surreal without ever getting so weird it risks alienating the audience. Perhaps he’s mainly afraid people might then miss the myriad points Zardoz is trying to make.
Movies have long depicted the division between the haves and the have-nots. What’s curious about Zardoz is the cruelty of its division. Other genre films with similar themes have expressed the exploitation of a working class by confining them to a lower tier that’s still a necessary part of society. Consider Metropolis (1927), Land of the Dead (2005), or Snowpiercer (2013) where people on the bottom rung do all the dirty work that makes the upper echelon comfortable.
Regardless of their seemingly inescapable status, there is still a need for these people. In a despicably cold capitalist calculus that gives them a certain value. In other words, they matter not because of their humanity but because they serve a purpose in society.
However, in Zardoz, none of the futuristic technology that enriches the lives of the Eternals requires the Brutals in any respect. This makes them simply an excluded human population shunned by a technologically sophisticated commune that has the means to improve their lives but considers them undeserving of technological salvation. It’s very similar to the dystopia seen in Elysium (2013), an exploitative imperial mode of living high technology is predicated on.
This touches on attitudes expressed by Peter Singer in his 1971 essay “Famine, Affluence, and Morality”. It essentially holds that inaction is immoral, especially if there is no risk to those acting. Singer simplifies this notion through a thought-experiment: if a child is drowning in a river and you can save them without risk, not doing so is immoral. Here, the Eternals are watching the Brutals drown. Then, it becomes worse than that.
As they attempt to understand the brute Zed, they use their fantastical equipment to replay his memories like reality television. The Eternals, who have grown apathetic over the ages, are gleefully delighted watching the horrifyingly savage ways Zed has slaughtered people, raped, and brutalized struggling survivors enduring the wasteland. Instead of becoming concerned by the suffering they see, the Zardoz 1% are happily entertained.
Although the reality television modern audiences might understand didn’t necessarily exist in 1974, sensationalism has long been a part of mass media. The idea of salacious entertainment goes back as far as ancient Roman gladiators, and 18th century books by the Marquis de Sade (which in turn inspired films like Pasolini’s Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975)). Criticizing the practice is at the heart of the satirical dark comedy Network (1976). So, it wasn’t metaphorically unrelatable to the audience of Zardoz. However, it’s interesting how time has changed its meaning.
That poignance is part of what makes writer-director John Boorman’s picture so enduring. Regardless of the inadvertent comedy Zardoz spiraled into being, laughable costumes, bad dialogue, and bungled metaphors obfuscate serious observations about humanity. On the DVD commentary Boorman echoed a critic with both saying the film’s ambitions exceeded its grasp. Blame it on the budget, risible effects, bad writing, or poor cinematic choices, Zardoz is ultimately a movie that fails because it tries to make too many points.
Boorman should’ve remembered the simplicity of his previous picture Deliverance (1972). It’s the story of some city folk who head out into the Appalachian wilderness for fishing and fun only to become victims of hillbilly brutality. Although not quite as grotesque as its cousin The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), Deliverance shares certain sentiments with that film. These include the very definition of Southern Gothic which is “the presence of irrational, horrific, and transgressive thoughts, desires, and impulses; grotesque characters; dark humor, and an overall angst-ridden sense of alienation.” Furthermore, there’s a thrilling dissection of masculinity alongside humanity’s relationship to nature.
As John Boorman said, “It was really about men living in a city suddenly experiencing nature in all its terror.”
This satirized the countercultural Back-to-the-Land movement popular at the time. As some hurried to leave cities for more rural locales, films like Deliverance, Rituals (1977), and Southern Comfort (1981) darkly mocked any idea these were safer places. But the point is there was a simplicity to the expression of these notions alongside a limited number of them.
Zardoz is a slog through one deep idea after another. Instead of moving towards set pieces featuring drama or action, the way Deliverance does, this movie keeps moving towards metaphors. There’s never a respite from an earnest point writer-director John Boorman feels needs desperate attention. Unlike Andrei Tarkovsky, he never gives the audience time to digest an idea before moving onto the next. The result is a choking deluge of overt symbolism, metaphor, and failed poetic visuals jammed down the throat.
Another fault of the film is the fantastical. Despite being sci-fi, Zardoz rarely strays into unreal territory regardless of its surreal tendencies. It tries to stay grounded even when making metaphysical observations. Essentially, Boorman gets lost in the world building rather than exploring the world he’s built. Other metaphorical movies, such as The Platform (2019), don’t explain their cinematic universe, preferring to spend time on character reactions to their situations. Plus, a little mystery can be more compelling than minute details.
Some of these missteps might stem from certain failings prior to the project. Boorman had been working on an adaptation of The Lord of the Rings. The immense financial requirements for his proposed picture killed the project. However, I think it’s fair to speculate that losing the opportunity to bring to the screen the cornucopia of deep thematic elements inherent in any Lord of the Rings adaptation kicked off a desire to build his own epic fantasy. Boorman hints as much on DVD commentary, and instead of refining Zardoz, raced to get it made while studios were excited. Hurrying may also have been the result of losing his intended star.
The role of Zed was originally written for Burt Reynolds. Initially interested but eventually unable to take the part, it went to Sean Connery who was desperate for any role after typecasting as James Bond had stalled his career. Still, it’s easy to see how the role was meant for Reynolds.
His career, especially in the 1970s, largely involved being a rugged firebrand with silver tongue sarcasm who never does what he’s told. It’s evident in films like White Lightning (1973), The Longest Yard (1974), then Smokey and the Bandit (1977). So, at a glance, the role might seem like a departure for Sean Connery. The Scotsman’s career is marked by a tendency to play parts with a regal aura of superiority regardless of his character’s social position. In The Untouchables (1987) he’s basically king of the beat cops. Note the poise of Captain Marko Ramius in The Hunt for Red October (1990). And none would ever dare to forget the illimitable Juan Sánchez-Villalobos Ramírez in Highlander (1986). However, anyone who’s seen The Hill (1965), where he plays a defiant inmate in a brutal military prison, might see how he’d fit the part.
The point being that by the end of Zardoz, Connery’s character essentially evolves from a pistol-packing barbarian to a demigod king. Imbued with all human knowledge, he decrees that the remaining Eternals leave the Vortex to build a better society. He then retreats with Consuella (Charlotte Rampling) in tow to start a family as the audience watches a montage of them aging then decaying into skeletons holding hands.
From one perspective, it’s a noble act. He essentially tells the people to build a better world without gods or kings. Then he removes himself from the equation. However, it comes across as him declaring, “As your god-king, I send you forth to do as I say; have no more gods or kings.”
Zardoz wants to make several insights about various concepts. From religion to social hierarchy, there are numerous ideas in play. Several of them even propose interesting takes — the nuclear family as a dead end, evils of police brutality, the importance of mortality, the need for struggle to stay engaged with society, etc. The problem is that there are so many operating simultaneously they interfere with one another.
Actions taken by characters sometimes contradict the notions they express. That’s when they’re presented in tasteful ways. The idea that physical sexual intimacy is an important part of being human is fine but then while still a brute Zed tends to reintroduce this idea by raping people. Violence is decried, especially as a means of social control, until the Eternals are running around literally begging to be slaughtered by invading Exterminators — death is bad but necessary. Say no to violence until someone asks you to shoot them in the face.
The best argument in support of any of this is that Zardoz is aiming at a commentary on excess. Going to an extreme in any direction doesn’t benefit people. Perspective may be the best lesson from Zardoz. Points of view are malleable, so they can change, though there is risk of manipulation, yet stagnated views have toxic consequences. The Eternals, for instance, live in thrall of a self-aggrandizing myth that they don’t realize is fueling their own suicidal ideation. It’s not until a higher power secretly inspires one of them to fake being the god Zardoz to instigate an Exterminator sneaking in to destroy their society that they’re freed.
That sentence was exhausting to write, yet it shows how comically convoluted the movie is. Like Megalopolis (2024), Zardoz was intended as a grand sci-fi cinematic experience full of earnest ideas which might inspire people to do better. Now it’s largely a meme mocking Sean Connery in a red diaper and matching bandoliers. Yet, repeated viewings make it the harder to laugh at Zardoz because I can see what it desperately wanted to be, and sincerity is no joke.
