Zed & Two Noughts (Widescreen): Amazon.ca: Brian Deacon, Eric Deacon, Andr�a Ferr�ol, Frances Barber, Joss Ackland, Jim Davidson, Agn�s Brulet, Guusje van Tilborgh, Gerard Thoolen, Ken Campbell, Wolf Kahler, Geoffrey Palmer, Sacha Vierny, Peter Greenaway, John Wilson, Kees Kasander, Peter Sainsbury: DVD

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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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Customer Reviews

20 Reviews

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
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4.2 out of 5 stars (20 customer reviews)

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4.0 out of 5 stars Get the BFI Version, Jun 28 2004

By

Chris (London UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Zed & Two Noughts (Widescreen) (DVD)

If you have a European or multi-region DVD player, get the BFI edition of this movie, which includes a director's commentary and introduction, trailers for this and The Draughtsman's Contract and extracts from a "making of" documentary.

The film itself? Brilliant, arch, beautifully photographed and probably Greenaway's most accessible work.

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5.0 out of 5 stars A dark celebration by the simetry, May 6 2004

By

Hiram Gomez Pardo (Valencia, Venezuela) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: Zed & Two Noughts (Widescreen) (DVD)

This film is an intelligent puzzle. You must be building the story , the clues are given ironically, tragicaly and above all subrepticiously.
Two twins married with two sisters , a swan , murder, guilty the same lover, the one and the couple are engaged, come together , and become unending laberynth of borgian proportions. A man dreams that another guy dreams. This story is just fascinatong
The archetipes are precisely defined. Oparin makes his own web.
The feelings involved around a common tragedy, just having the zoo as a huge frame where the life begins and ends, without any pain, with natural precision. The speling music of Nyman, Sacha Vierny and his amazing photography, the dark poetry supports the dialogues, the desperation seems even not forced but she assumes slowly its place in the play.
Greenaway is a brilliant director with a unpleasant life's view. What it realy is amazing is the total absence of feelings in every one of the depicted characters. ou won't see a teardrop, even in the worst of one situation.
The homagge to Vermeer makes the film still more interesting, arrestong and provocative, in a style who reminds us to Luis Buñuel but without the religious ethics underlayed of the spanish director.
Certainly the multiple readings that Zoo and two noughts offer us walk around the biology, the huge affection of Greenaway by the insects, worms and all that little universe who survives under our indiferent behavior.
This trilogy of films together with the bely of an architect and drowning by numbers, allows us to traduce the universe of this excentric and irreverent film maker.
Don't miss this film.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Origins of Life, Vermeer, symmetry. ZOO.... and OOZe, Nov 30 2003

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N. Chodoba "arrbogast" (Torrington, CT USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: Zed & Two Noughts (Widescreen) (DVD)

Everytime I see A Zed and Two Noughts I catch a phrase that I missed the double meaning on the previous time I watched it. Perhaps the fascination of watching bodies decay clouds my perceptions. Perhaps the beauty of the photographic images by Sacha Vierny, The arresting music by Michael Nyman, or the insistent guiding hand of Director Peter Greenaway (who is creating his own cinematic alphabet here, later to be explored in his subsequent films, and drawing upon his wonderful short films and early opus The Falls) is too much for one viewing to contain! Or perhaps it is getting wrapped up in the same mystery that consumes the twin zoologists. Why death, and why a car accident involving a pregnant Swan on Swann's way, no less??!! Speaking of doubles, you have the twin brothers, their two dead wives, the two legless lovers, the doctor who is a descendant of the master forger (a great faker must be praised I guess!) Van Meegeren, himself a double (dubious) of the painter Vermeer,or the fact that there are Vermeers in the film, and they are doubled on camera in certain shots, and more and more...
Is this a waste of film? DEFINITELY NOT. You go into a film with the knowledge you have up to that point, and sometimes a film challenges you to rise to the occasion as opposed to talking down to an audience. This is not for people who think watching a movie means some quiet time and maybe a laugh or two. This is a film where you are constantly challenged to make observations and opinions based on what you are shown. There is a thesis here, and I am not sure whether it is an artistic thesis, a scientific thesis, a moral and ethical thesis, or all or none of the above, but what I do know is that this is one of the most challenging pieces of moving image I have ever seen (I have only seen about 1,600 films in my life, so I admit I have not seen that much), and it is easier to walk away from it then to stay and appreciate the rich complexities of knowledge this film draws from. The choice is yours but I highly recommend it for knowledge seekers.
The DVD is of great quality, and except for the lack of extras (I would have LOVED to have seen the trailer for this film), it is a worthy purchase.

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Most recent customer reviews

1.0 out of 5 stars Pointless
Like many of Peter Greenaway's movies, this one suffers from several problems. The most critical of these is that his opening scenes never emotionally tie you to any of the... Read more

Published on Oct 13 2003 by Mark Jarvis

5.0 out of 5 stars A classic. Though obviously has limited appeal!
A Zed & Two Noughts is a great, "arty" movie with some crazy speeded-up visuals of decaying animals and an absolutely brilliant soundtrack by Michael Nyman. Read more

Published on Sep 13 2003 by Ziggy Spaceboy