Zardoz ★★★☆☆
The opening is incredible and the movie is at its best when it is moving rapidly through different, clashing aesthetics. This stone god-head vomiting guns, the country farmhouse overlooked by (retro-)futuristic plastic domes, everything about Sean Connery’s costuming and that they have him evoking Bond by shooting at the camera while wearing that. And I quite like the view early on of the eternals, these rich kids, convinced of their own superiority and the utterly twisted worldview they have developed in order to justify the systems they benefit from.
But we stay with them too long, the film stagnates in the middle as it gets stuck with their petty bullshit as much as they are and starts to feel very muddled and a bit reactionary. The problem with these overlords who subjugate the immiserated masses is actually that they’re fucking hippies! The real rot is not the violence and hierarchy, it’s the forced peace and equity that they subject each other to that is robbing them of their spark and they need our noble rapist to show them what life is really about!
The movie picks up again towards the end as it cranks the weirdness up again, and Zed being much more aware of what is going on than might have previously been thought was interesting, though the fact they they put him in trousers is a tragedy.
It is also very strange that Zed, whose role was to bring everything libidinal back to these people who had forgotten how to live and to die, then ends his story by going and sitting in a cave forever until he skeletonises?
Also also, RIP to that guy who got sentenced to five years for bad vibes. And I quite enjoyed the extras all having big Irish heads on them.