Amazon.com: 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
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - Odd, erratic, erotic...a black comedy which features stop motion decay
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 ... Read More
Rating: - A Beautiful REGION 1 Edition
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 ... Read More
Rating: - Gorgeously filmed and elaborately constructed conceptual tour-de-force
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 ... Read More
Rating: - Elegant Tale of Decomposing
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. ... Read More
Rating: - this movie was a traffic accident, your disgusted but
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 ... Read More
- A Beautiful REGION 1 Edition
- this movie was a traffic accident, your disgusted but 