Chip Kaufmann’s Pick:
Zardoz (1974)
Of all the dystopian sci-fi flicks out there from Metropolis to Snowpiercer (see review this issue), none is more unique or more bizarre than British director John Boorman’s 1974 opus Zardoz.
Back in the day it was what was known as a “head trip”. The film is set in the 23rd century where 95% of the world has descended into chaos (no reason is given) while the remaining 5% consists of intellectuals who live in force field protected communities known as vortexes. These intellectuals are keepers of the world’s collective knowledge but do nothing with it.
Sean Connery plays an outsider who infiltrates one of the communities and discovers a society of people who are immortal and where disobedience is punished by aging the lawbreakers into senility without the possibility of death. People who commit suicide are simply regenerated so there is no possibility of escape. And that’s just for starters.
Boorman based his concept of a future society on a combination of the New Age communes and wealthy gated communities that he ran across in California in the late 1960s. You have to admit that the idea of such a possibility sounds pretty nightmarish and in this film it truly is.
Connery (in a role originally intended for Burt Reynolds and wearing a costume that makes him look like Pancho Villa in a red diaper)) is joined by a solid cast of British and Irish actors including Charlotte Rampling, Sara Kestleman, and John Alderton.
Zardoz is loaded with extremely imaginative visuals that still astonish (the film was shot in Ireland’s Wicklow Mountains) and it contains a bleak, absurdist Samuel Beckett sense of humor that plays better today than it did in 1974. Once seen Zardoz cannot be forgotten and the title punch line remains one for the ages.
Michelle Keenan’s Pick:
Locke (2014)
In keeping with our promise to cover unsung films that we think are worth your time, Locke is my DVD pick for the month. It played a well received, but short run in June here in Asheville, and it makes its way to the small screen August 12.
As a feature film, the premise for Locke sounds more than a bit boring. People have responded with bewildered amazement when I tell them they simply must see this movie. It’s difficult to convey how interesting it actually is, but here goes.
Ivan Locke (Tom Hardy) is a successful construction manager and a happily married family man. At the film’s start night has fallen and Locke is leaving his job site and getting into his car. We realize almost immediately that he’s making a decision – to go home or elsewhere. He chooses elsewhere, a choice that could irrevocably divest him of the life he has so carefully and lovingly built.
The rest of the film takes place in that car, on his drive from Birmingham to London, the titular character explaining his decision to colleagues, family, and the person awaiting his arrival at his journey’s destination. The only person we ever see is Locke. We hear other voices, but the camera stays with Locke throughout.
The minimalistic and unnecessary challenge to tell the story from this vantage point may seem like a stunt to some and/or a little too ‘artsy’ to others. Both of which could have been true in the wrong hands. In this instance it seems to have challenged the filmmakers and the actor to work that much harder to create an incredibly compelling piece of work.
Locke loves his job. He knows concrete the way a painter knows his canvas. Locke is also an adoring husband and father. The son of a good-for-nothing, deadbeat dad, he is determined to be a better man than his father; he may make mistakes but will ultimately do the right thing, even at his own expense. Locke’s fateful drive takes place after he receives a call (a call that has already occurred at the start of the film). A woman he barely knows, and for whom he feels very little, is in premature labor with his child (the result of a night where he behaved ‘not at all like himself’).
He navigates alternately through all three pressing situations. The result is an emotionally riveting film and a brilliant performance from Hardy. Hardy, who is best known to American audiences as the villain in The Dark Knight Rises, draws the viewer with his calm and painfully controlled demeanor and a Welch accent reminiscent of a young Richard Burton in tone and Anthony Hopkins in its rhythm. Seeing Hardy’s face for the entire 85 minutes of the movie is remarkably powerful; all the cracks in the not-so-subtle foundation metaphor play out in his every expression.
Written and directed by Stephen Knight (Dirty Pretty Things) and produced by Joe Wright (Anna Karenina, Pride and Prejudice), Locke is an impressive, not-to-be-missed little movie.