A Zed & Two Noughts (1990)

Tied for the best movie I have ever seen

The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Greenaway at his finest, pretentious to some viewers, his film on grief and decay stayed with me for many weeks and the final flash photography with snails was a triumph.Nyman created some wonderful pieces though neither artist quite surpasses their work on The Draughtmans contract in my humble opinion (I've yet to see The Falls), though still visually stunning this remains a sometimes darkly comic but ultimately unsettling piece - highly recommended.I am usually eager to see Greenaway films again and again and this is no exception, but it is "talking to me" from it's first viewing 6 months hence. When my mind is finally starved of this feast and I am ready for a new perspective on it I will sit down and indulge in it again.

I first saw this film when it came to British cinemas in 1985. Now, in 2010, I've just seen it again. 25 years ago, as an impressionable film school student, I was both baffled and fascinated by its multi-layered imagery and anarchic themes. Greenaway was my hero then for he had mastery over cinematic form and a unique style that I had never seen before. Added to Michael Nyman's powerful, pulsating music, this film gave me the shivers and also left me breathless. Looking at the film today, it seems barren of emotion (intentional) and laboured. I struggled to sit through the film, and luckily, as I was watching it at home, I could get up at intervals to make tea, have a cigarette, and look out the window. I made the effort to watch Greenaway's patronising director's commentary and 'introduction' to the film, but it still left me with the feeling that I had largely wasted two hours. I may have learnt something about sumptuous photography and resonating soundtracks, but A ZED AND TWO NOUGHTS left me cold, sickened and bored. In 1985 this film may have caused a stir, being made in the negativity and economic/cultural stagnation of Thatcher's Conservative Britain. I remember that was not a good period to live through. A film like this might have caused a sensation among cinema-goers, as it is certainly original. But that is its saving grace.

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.

I saw A ZED AND TWO NOUGHTS in the spring of 1987 . I read in the tv guide that this film " Contains scenes that some viewers may find disturbing " . Great I thought , this mean`s that it`s gonna be a gritty hard hitting film just like SCUM or APOCALYPSE NOW or all these other films that contain the warning " Contains scenes that some viewers may find disturbing " . So I sat down to watch it and was disgusted by what I saw . What a load of pretentious anally retentive crap ! Who the hell wants to watch vegetable matter and dead animals decompose ? Come on put your hands up . People who admit to liking this film are just kidding themselves on , they`re showing off big time by pretending to be intellectuals . Obviously working class scum like myself and most other people who watch movies are too thick to recognise ZOO as being a wonderful piece of art . And you know what ? I`m glad about that . It`s not often I give a film a 1 on the IMDB but that`s what I`m giving ZOO . On an entertainment level it deserves 0 . Or should that be a NOUGHT ?