Zardoz
Directed by: John Boorman - 1974 - UK - Color - Blu-ray - 2.35:1 - 1 hour, 45 minutes
Starring: Sean Connery, Charlotte Rampling, Sara Kestelman, John Alderton
“Um, it was the 70s, and I was doing a lot of drugs. Frankly, even I'm not entirely sure what parts of the movie are about.” - John Boorman, writer/director of Zardoz
Zardoz takes place in a distant future where humanity has been divided into two main groups - the Eternals, who pursue art, science, and higher thought in a utopian bubble called the Vortex, and the Brutals, the unwashed masses who occupy the lands outside the Vortex, growing food for the Eternals. The masses are kept in line by the extra-brutal Brutals known as the Exterminators, masked enforcers who kill any who defy the laws issued by their god Zardoz, a giant floating stone head that collects crops and in exchange spits out guns, ammo, and philosophy. Zed is an Exterminator who defies his ruler and, with only his pistol, ponytail, and red bandolier mankini, rides the godhead to the Vortex, where he finds the society of the Eternals divided. Many have turned into Apathetics, catatonics who have grown weary of immortality and want only to die. Others who question the status quo are forcibly aged by several years, the worst punishment allowable in the immortal Vortex. Zed is fascinating to the Eternals - a violent, virile specimen that they want to study before destroying, but Zed has more revolutionary plans.
OK, so technically it’s not “space”, as it tops out somewhere in the lower atmosphere, but there’s enough camp to make up the difference. Zardoz is a great example of the 70s post-hippie, pre-Star-Wars heavy-handed social commentary sci-fi (see also: Soylent Green, Silent Running, Logan’s Run), but far weirder than most. Director Boorman was coming off the success of Deliverance, which helps explain how he got a studio to finance this. All of the neuroses that Barbarella’s future conquered are on full display, and Zed crashes into the 60s-style utopia like a bull-in-achina-shop (if bulls read Nietzsche).