Zardoz (1974)  

Review: written July 2025

Good for knocking out some zzz’s..

Sean Connery’s post-Bond sci-fi venture with John Boorman at the helm may have been a bold change of pace to reinvent himself, but perhaps he might have been better choosing something more coherent, and a bit less psychedelic.

Connery plays Zed, a “Brutal”, one of a gang of violent men on horseback, given guns by a mysterious floating head claiming to be their God, Zardoz, who gives them a mission – to kill and rape, to reduce the population. Zed sneaks aboard the giant head, journeying with it to its source, the Vortex, which looks suspiciously like what it is – a quaint Irish village, spruced up with some futuristic looking hydroponic farming apparatus. The occupants there are Eternals, immortal humans who are increasingly bored with their stagnant existence. Zed’s arrival causes frictions and starts to divide a society whose pastoral and peaceful first appearance belies a darker underbelly of frustration and deception. He becomes the focus of May (Sara Kestelman), who wishes to study him, and Consuella (Charlotte Rampling) who thinks he should be destroyed. Is Zed a powerless victim of his curiosity, or does he have a grander plan? More importantly, is there some point where you will actually care about any of these characters?

Sci-fi in the 70’s was trending to being “about something”.. but it feels that the philosophy and meaning here are layered on so thick, with allusions to classical literature and poetry as well, that they simply forgot to make a coherent and entertaining story out of it too. Beethoven’s 7th Symphony is referenced in the score frequently.. a piece of music famous for showing how you can take one note and extend it into something musically pleasing and fascinating. And yet it’s as if the movie has done the opposite – take a myriad of ideas and tonal notes, and merge into something which fails to be nearly as much as the sum of its parts.

The costumes are whacky – once you’ve seen Zed’s outfit of thigh high leather boots combined with a bizarre leotard / loincloth which looks like a cross between a diaper and Borat’s leotard, all festooned with bandoliers. Contrast this this with the pastel shades of clothes for the eternals which at times look like leftovers from The Handsmaid’s Tale and at others clearly designed to be as loose as possible for easy ‘access’. This, plus the emphasis on the importance of sex in a vibrant society (as the movie seems to see it), all somehow acts to detract rather than accentuate an otherwise potentially biting polemic on the strictures of society undermining our humanity.

Almost impossible to describe unless you’ve seen it - and yet, please don’t take that as a challenge to go and see it. It’s a mess.. An intriguing, grand and ambitious mess in places, but hard to keep the goodwill going all the way to the frustratingly allegorical and nihilistic ending which resolves or explains little. I applaud ambition and originality, which this movie has in spades. But it doesn’t make the end product in this case any more watchable.