A Zed & Two Noughts
by Peter Greenaway
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DVD details
Actor: Andr??a Ferr??ol, Brian Deacon, Eric Deacon, Frances Barber, Joss AcklandDirector: Peter Greenaway
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Subtitled)
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
DVD Reviews of A Zed & Two Noughts
DVD Review: Odd, erratic, erotic...a black comedy which features stop motion decay
Summary: 4 Stars
How does one define oddness? I'd suggest by starting with two words: Peter Greenaway. You can also use those two words to define "Unique cinema visions," "total control," "beautiful views" and "don't mess with me." Greenaway is his own world, and you're either eager for a visit or you'll insist on staying off the space ship. I'd suggest you prepare for your visit by packing away any compulsion you might have to explain things...such as his meaning, his importance...all those categories, lists and twos of things...and your own squeamishness. "I don't make pictures that have a sell-by date," Greenaway once said. That's especially true of A Zed and Two Noughts, where a good many of the things we'll see have long passed their sell-by date.
We start the movie with a double death in a car crash by a zoo...death by swan on a lane called Swan's Way. The wives of our two zoologists may be gone, but their husbands, twins and formerly joined twins Oswald and Oliver Deuce, will lead us on an exploration of grief and decay, illustrated by their stop motion movies. We will meet a beautiful amputee, soon to have her remaining leg off by a mad surgeon, probably for issues of symmetry. In addition to wet decay, we'll enjoy vomiting, frontal nudity, Vermeer, Greenaway's magnificent color palette, black and white animals, a white mare named Hortense, several interesting fetishes, plus the movie's unique chapter headings: Mercury, Apple, Prawn, Fish, Crocodile, Swan, Dog, Zebra and Escargot. Black comedy, indeed.
I'll admit I don't think I understood a thing about A Zed and Two Noughts. I started to read what some critics and fans have offered by way of analysis and found much of what they had to say, from my point of view, largely incomprehensible, too detailed or too dull. Greenaway is chilly, controlling and all about style layered heavily on top of substance. He can make Stanley Kubrick look loosey-goosey. I found a Zed and Two Noughts, in a perverse kind of way, enjoyable. I suspect that's because Greenaway comes up with such odd, intriguing and often disturbing visions. They can almost make you forget what the devil he's getting at. For me, Prospero's Books is a perfect blend of style and story; The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover is an almost perfect match of style and story; The Draughtsman's Contract is an amusing overlay of manners, murder, style and story. But A Zed and Two Noughts? Well, I found it chilly, sometimes uninvolving and often amusing. I enjoyed it, more or less, most of the time. (I occasionally used the fast-forward button). If ten people can tell me what the movie means, beyond the old standbys of death, grief and snails, I'll bet I'll read ten wildly different opinions. That's no particular criticism of either Greenaway or the film.
The Zeitgeist DVD release is anamorphic, with several extras including an introduction and a commentary by Greenaway.
DVD Review: A Beautiful REGION 1 Edition
Summary: 5 Stars
Amazon's listing is totally incorrect! This is the AMERICAN REGION 1 edition!!!
This is Peter Greenaway's wonderfully twisted black comedy that's obsessed with swans, death, decay and, of all things, twins. It's great pretzel logic fun on an incredible DVD to boot.
DVD Review: Gorgeously filmed and elaborately constructed conceptual tour-de-force
Summary: 5 Stars
I am very excited that Zeitgeist is putting out this new dvd transfer of this exceptional film. This is Peter Greenaway at his finest, his obsession with ordering lives and things and with the discovery of symmetries between the obsessions that drive both science and sexuality is perfectly meshed by the story of two twin zoologists who grieve the passing of their wives in a bizarre car accident by simultaneously embarking upon a quixotic research project into the nature of decomposition and an affair with the amputee who had been driving the car. Thrown into the mix are a storytelling prostitute and aspiring writer named Venus de Milo, a murderer of black and white animals, a man who lost his legs for loving horses a little too much, a surgeon who is overly fond of amputation and obsessed by Vermeer. The best cinematic comparison is probably Alain Resnais' My American Uncle -- both films raise questions about the pretense that we are above the animals, that we are rational creatures and are not driven by instinct and drive. This film argues, I think, that we are unique and interesting animals and at our most unique and distinctive when we show our obsession with and drive to establish our distinction from the other animals. The music throughout is perfect and matches the style and tone of the film superbly; the story, while utterly unique is nevertheless comprehensible and never less than fascinating. It is the kind of film that rewards repeated viewings, and is a must-see film for those who delight in the possibilities of cinema, and are willing to suspend their expectations and be caught up by the delightful imagination and insight of one of the most distinctive and compelling filmmakers.DVD Review: Elegant Tale of Decomposing
Summary: 4 Stars
I knew how strange and unusual Greenaway could be but Zed, I believe could take the cake :). I am not sure what it is all about but I still enjoy the triumvirate Greenaway - Sasha Verny- Michael Nyman. Some ideas and images Greenaway will use in the later "8 1/2 women" and "The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover" - especially, the soundtrack. "Dead Ringers" and "Mon oncle d'Am?rique" (two beautiful weirdnesses themselves) also come to mind while watching Greenaway's elegant tale of decomposing which is also his meditations about life, death and grief. As in earlier "The Draughtsman's Contract" (1982), Greenaway explores the relationship between the close relatives - the twin brothers are in the center of "A Zed & two Noughts". The movie is also a modern retelling of an ancient myth about Leda and Zeus who took the form of a swan and slept with Leda on the same night as her husband, King Tyndareus. Leda bore Helen and Polydeuces, children of Zeus while at the same time bearing Castor and Clytemnestra, children of her husband Tyndareus, the King of Sparta.
Greenaway considers that 90% of his films one way or another refers to paintings. "A Zed & two Noughts" refers openly and with great admiration to the paintings of Johannes Vermeer van Delft.
"A Zed & two Noughts" is not easy film to watch, its characters are not sympathetic, it lacks warmth and sentimentality but as always in Greenaway's films, it is a feast for eyes, ears, and for brain.
DVD Review: this movie was a traffic accident, your disgusted but
Summary: 3 Stars
you have to look at the blood and carnage. I think this would have been a little clearer if it was made in America. But, then it would have been a different movie. Quite frankly I don't think Hillary Duff could have played the Swan lady with any depth. Twins, once conjoined, Zookeepers are obsessed with decaying flesh. They have hours of footage on animals from their zoo decaying in stages. Very European volumptousness, frontal nudity (the twins) yup, hot dogs and all. Which I do enjoy, and wouldn't see in an American version, unless Harvey Keitell was in it. Their wives die in a car crash with a friend, who survives, but loses her leg. Twins take turns with her and eventually she gets preggy, but dosen't know which one is the father but it dosen't matter anyway because they are bothers and twins. Meanwhile she has her other leg removed voluntarly, I don't know why. She gives birth, to what else? Twins. Then she dies and gives custody to a man with no legs but more of a brain than the twins have. Also the man who owns the Zoo is a sadist and mutilates the animals in the zoo. This is not for the squeamish, the music was too loud, but, if you can look past the weirdness, it's a story by Greenaway, who is crystal clear compared to a David Lynch mess. So get high and give this one a try. Enjoy!
Description 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 Bu?uel'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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