A Zed & Two Noughts
by Peter Greenaway
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Andréa Ferréol, Brian Deacon, Eric Deacon, Frances Barber, Joss AcklandDirector: Peter Greenaway
Brand: Zeitgeist Films
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); English (Original Language)
Format: Anamorphic, Color, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 116 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-02-12
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Zeitgeist Films
Movie Reviews of A Zed & Two Noughts
Movie Review: Greenaway's Best....
Summary: 5 Stars
Peter Greenaway's A Zed & Two Noughts is a fascinating take (both visually and plot-wise) on the archetypal theme of coping with death. Greenaway's technical abilities shine through -- especially his haunting time-lapse photography of decaying animals interspersed with Michael Nyman's repetitive minimalist score -- and many of the standard Greenaway traits prevalent in his later films are present -- his obsession with Dutch painters, placing his characters in visually arresting still life-like tableaus, etc.
A Zed & Two Noughts marked a substantial departure from his previous film, The Draughtsman's Contract (1982). Gone is the historical local. Gone are the lush costumes. Instead, the local of this vaguely contemporary tale is strangely transformed by Greenaway's camera. Everything is symmetrical. Everything craws with animals. Occasionally, a location is represented by a single still that moves in the breezes ever so slightly. Color/texture is everything.
The plot (some spoilers): two naturalist brothers (played by Brian and Eric Deacon) grieve over the death of both of their wives caused by an escaped swan from the zoo. The car's driver, Alba Bewick (played by the well-known Andéa Ferréol) mirraculously survives but loses her leg. Both brothers, in an effort to get over the deaths, decide to construct elaborate time lapse photography of decaying animals (moving up the food chain). Also, both fall in love with Alba. Other plot elements entwine with the central story: the dead animals used in the time-lapse photography are supplied by shady figures at the Zoo (filmed at the Amsterdam Zoo). At the same time, Alba's doctor, convinces her that she needs her other leg amputated in a nefarious scheme to get her to fit in his recreation of various Johannes Vermeer paintings.
To enjoy Greenaway one must accept heavy-handed (but spectacular) visuals, explicit male and female nudity (rarely sensual or erotic), relatively poor acting, repetitive Nyman scores, and uneven writing (done by Greenaway himself). However, A Zed & Two Noughts maintains a strange/disturbing appeal. Despite the audience figuring out the rest of the plot about half-way through, the film is actually quite streamlined and concise which is astounding considering Greenaway's normal tendencies. I found this was his best written film and I rarely cringed at the acting. Ultimately, the film rings on the hollow side. We don't really empathize with the characters. We don't understand their motivations (especially during the film's last act). Actions are often contrived.
Too often we see Greenaway the provocateur instead of consummate artist (for example the listless second half of his latest film Nightwatching) -- A Zed & Two Noughts rarely falls into that trap. All in all, this is his best constructing film plot-wise and visually that I've seen yet (if only I could track down Prospero's Books). A truly unsettling and hallucinatory experience....
Summary of A Zed & Two Noughts
"Two legs look so good together, don't you think?" A masterpiece of modern cinema, A Zed and Two Noughts is Peter Greenaway's beautifully disturbing and darkly humorous take on erotic obsession and death. The film opens with an automobile-swan accident in front of the Rotterdam Zoo; two women die and a third, Alba (Andrea Ferreol), loses her leg. The two widowers, twin zoologists Oliver and Oswald (Eric and Brian Deacon, in roles originally offered to the Quay Brothers), fixate on their wives' bodies, and slowly become obsessed with evolution and decomposition even going as far as meticulously crafting exquisitely morbid time-lapsed films of decaying corpses and creatures. Meanwhile, a mad surgeon plots to use Alba as a subject in his experiments with animal symmetry and Vermeer homage.With this follow-up to his acclaimed The Draughtsman's Contract, Greenaway intensifies his already striking visual style by collaborating with legendary French cinematographer Sacha Vierny to create a masterpiece of motivated light. Full of surprises and magnificent conundrums, A Zed and Two Noughts is a perversely comic and teasing treat for the mind and senses.
SPECIAL FEATURES
- Restored anamorphic transfer, created from Hi-Def elements
- Peter Greenaway commentary and video introduction
- Behind-the-scenes footage from ?O, Zoo!, by Philip Hoffman
- The complete "Decay" sequences
- Snail sketches by Peter Greenaway
- English subtitles for the deaf and hearing impaired
- Original theatrical trailer
In Peter Greenaway's 8-1/2 Women (1999), a woman's death propels a bereaved widower and his son into carnal questing, via a harem of idiosyncratic ladies. Similarly, 1985's A Zed and Two Noughts follows the Deuce brothers, zoologists and former Siamese twins, who lose their wives in a bizarre collision--a great swan crashes into a car driven down Swann's Way by one Alba Bewick (translates as "white swan"). The brothers become obsessed with photographing and measuring decay ("by degrees of grief"), from Apple to Zebra, and equally obsessed with voluptuous Alba, who, having lost one leg in the wreck, later has the other removed... perhaps for the sake of symmetry. Greenaway's funny, gruesome, gorgeous "zoo" also features hooker Venus di Milo, arbiter of the monetary value of everything; an amputation-happy surgeon who'd like to make Alba fit into a Vermeer painting; a sinister Phantom of the Zoo who offs black-and-white animals; and other assorted, often twinned, exotics.
Sacha Vierny, who shot Resnais's Last Year at Marienbad and Buñuel's Belle de Jour, visualizes Zed in richly erotic detail, every frame a feast for the eyes. Evoking melancholy pavane or stately funeral march, Michael Nyman's music marks the inexorable progression of a fever dream celebrating the power of artifice and nature. Trained as a painter, educated in linguistics and philosophy, Greenaway deftly weaves an exquisite pattern of puns, colors, images, words, ideas, and music into a cinematic meditation on life, death, and sex. Weird to the max, mesmerizing, and some kind of masterpiece. --Kathleen Murphy
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