There was a time long ago when filmmakers had pretensions beyond simple entertainment, and wanted to make a grand philosophical “statement” about the nature of humanity and its place in the universe. Sometimes this involved an examination of pseudo-religious beliefs, a universal power, and the possibility of eternal life. One filmmaker who had such pretensions was British director John Boorman, who after the success of 1972’s Deliverance decided to make a personal vanity project which he had difficulty in getting financing for, and ended up shooting on a shoe-string budget. The film, released in 1974, would be called Zardoz; Boorman admitted that his vision was far too ambitious for the budget he had, but he was able to enlist Sean Connery, who agreed to make the film for peanuts, since he was desperate for work to escape the James Bond typecasting.
Zardoz is one of those films that if you don’t “get” the philosophical musings of the characters, it makes no sense at all. Connery looks a bit ridiculous spending most of his time running around in a loincloth amongst characters dressed-up in what looks like a cross between ancient Egyptian and Roman garb. Early previews of the film indicated that viewers were “confused” about what was the film was supposed to be about, and Boorman shot a new scene with a character attempting to “clear things up,” although he admits it didn’t do too well in that regard. A disembodied head wearing what looks like an ancient Egyptian headdress speaks to us:
I am Arthur Frayn, and I am Zardoz. I have lived 300 years, and I long to die, but death is no longer possible. I am immortal. I present now my story, full of mystery and intrigue, rich in irony, and most satirical. It is set deep in a possible future, so none of these events have yet occurred. But they may. Be warned, lest you end as I. In this tale, I am a fake god by occupation, and a magician by inclination. Merlin is my hero. I am the puppet master. I manipulate many of the characters and events you will see. But I am invented too, for your entertainment and amusement. And you, poor creatures, who conjured you out of the clay? Is God in show business too?
This entry into the film probably didn’t work to well because it suggested this film was a “satire,” but that there was little humor to be had—unless, of course, you think a film is so “bad” it at least can be viewed as comic relief, such as the Ed Wood film Plan 9 From Outer Space. But Zardoz played “dead” serious, although for some people more “dead” than “serious.” Yet Zardoz does have its moments, and for all its pompous philosophizing, there is an interesting tale to glean from it that modern day humans with a modicum of self-examination can take with them in a moment of reflection. In fact, this is a film that actually says more about our current times than is comfortable to admit, and certainly could not be made given the current political climate.
Zardoz begins with what appears to be rather savage-looking warriors on horseback, wearing some mask-like helmets and armed with either spears or rifles. They are former “brutals” who have been “bred” to become “Exterminators.” Out of the sky appears their “god,” Zardoz.
They cry “Praise be to Zardoz,” who responds in a low, booming voice “Zardoz speaks to you, his chosen one’s. You have been raised up from brutality to kill the brutals who multiply and are legion.” Zardoz, is there to give them “the gift of the gun.” The gun is good. But “the penis is evil. The penis shoots the seeds and makes new life to poison the earth with a plague of men, as once it was.” The guns are to be used to kill the brutals and to “purify” the earth of their filth. “Go forth and kill. Zardoz has spoken.” At that moment hundreds of rifles and many more were thrown bullets to fill bandoliers spill out of the giant stone head’s mouth, to the apparent delight of the Exterminators: “Guns! Guns!” We then see a figure in the foreground turn around; it is Connery as “Zed,” who aims a pistol at the camera, and fires.
Next we are inside the stone head flying at a considerable height. We see Zed emerging from a pile of wheat with pistol in his hand. Elsewhere there are barrels of other foodstuffs and human forms inside pods. Zed sees someone walking up to the opening that represents the mouth of Zardoz and shoots him in the shoulder. We see that it is Arthur Frayn; he tells Zed that it was foolish to shoot him, because there was much he could have him learned from him, and without him, he was nothing—just a “bore.” The wind blows Arthur out of the mouth, presumably killing him—or not, since he claims to be “immortal.” How “pointless” he shouts, as he exits the scene.
The stone head lands inside a lush green countryside, near a quaint little village. Zed looks around what appears to be a food-production operation, and then investigates a house that includes a shrine to Zardoz. Zed hears a voice, and discovers it is coming from a ring of some sort which provides information upon request. Through both words and projection it announces the harvest produce report. Arthur Frayn apparently is the owner of the house, which is located in Vortex 4.
Zed escapes into the country, where he encounters a woman named May (Sara Kestelman). He points his gun at her, but she employs some kind of telepathic power to disable him. Zed knows he is the Vortex, but lies about how he got there. He knows about the Vortex because “Zardoz says if we obey him, you will go to the Vortex when we die, and there you will live forever.” Zed admits that he doesn’t think he is dead, yet.
Zed is now being “examined,” and is put under some form of hypnosis where the “Eternals” try to understand what he is by viewing memories of his past existence, which seem to be entirely about hunting and killing brutals, and raping their women. Zed’s voice is to be heard enumerating the “catch” for the day: “25 brutals killed. Took a woman in his name. Zardoz.” May and Consuella (Charlotte Rampling) discuss what these images mean: “The memories are simple heroics. There are no abstractions. It is very fragmented. The shock of entering the Vortex could be responsible.” Zed seems to be able to control his memory, and they cannot learn how he entered the Vortex, or what happened to Arthur Frayn.
Prodded to reveal more, Zed tells of Zardoz ordering the Exterminators to capture the brutals as slave labor instead of killing them, so that they will grow wheat; Zed, however, cannot resist shooting one that is too weakened to work. May and Consuella discuss whether forced farming was “wise,” but they need the bread. This was the first they have learned of this since Arthur was “delegated to control them”; thus we learn that Arthur Fayn was not a “god” but one of the Eternals, who kept “control” of the outlands by impersonating a god. May wants to continue to find out more about Zed and his existence, but Consuella insists that “It’s better not to know. These images will pollute us. Quench it. Quell it.”
But May insist on further investigation. She claims Zed is purely of “scientific” interest to her. Consuella insist that since they do not need him to find out what happened to Arthur Frayn, who the all-knowing computer says has died but is now in the process of “reconstruction”; they do not need to keep Zed alive. Meanwhile the rest of the Eternals are viewing the images of Zed’s mind, which they find “terribly exciting.” When one of them notes “the suffering,” but it is brushed off. “You can’t equate their feelings with ours. It’s just entertainment.”
Seeing such scenes of violence, it is wondered “What has Arthur been doing out there all these years? He never discussed this in the Vortex. He will have to be thoroughly investigated.” But then again, “No one else wanted to run the outlands. He’s an artist. He does it with imagination.” Zed provides a running commentary: “I love to see them (the brutals) running. I love the moment of their deaths, when I am one with Zardoz.”
Meanwhile, Friend (John Alderton), picks about at Zed’s body, as if he is some prize animal. “Obscenely decaying flesh. The sweet scent of putrefaction in the air.” Friend is clearly as fascinated with Zed as May is, although more out of sheer boredom. “He’s a fine strong beast dear May. What exactly do you want to do with him?”
May insists her interest in Zed is purely scientific: “A full genetic study. Break its DNA code. See if there are evolutionary changes since ours were analyzed 200 years ago. Discover any new hereditary diseases that may have emerged to broaden our immunization spectrum.”
Consuella, who appears to be the “leader” of the Eternals, continues to be skeptical of May’s intentions: “That all sounds respectably scientific, but what is May’s underthought? Not long ago she was asking for new births. Now she want to bring in this animal from the outside. Think of our equilibrium. Remember the delicate balance we must maintain. The presence will dismay our tranquility.” While the women start pawing Zed, clearly finding him a sexual object, Consuella laments his “disrupting effect.” She warns them that he only refrains from “raping and killing” because he knows his “life is at stake.”
Consuella finds the “psychic disturbance” alarming, and asks Avalow (Sally Anne Newton), who apparently is the “spiritual” guide of the Eternals, her opinion of what to do about Zed. She unhelpfully muses “How did we conjure up a monster in our midst? And why? That is the question we must answer.” Friend slyly informs Zed that he has “set the fur flying” and wonders what is going in his “pea brain, you sly old monster.” There is a silent, telepathic vote, and Zed is allowed to live for another three weeks, until May completes her “experiments” on him.
Zed is kept in a cage like an animal. Friend lets him out, informing him that it’s “Time for work.” However, since Arthur was his friend and confidant, he insists on knowing what happened to him. To pressure him, he gives the same mind-force that May had given him earlier to incapacitate him. “Ever hear the expression if looks could kill? Well, they can here.” Zed still refuses to say. Friend is content to wait him out; in the meantime he will protect Zed and give him menial work to keep him out of trouble with Consuella.
They go inside what appears to be a place of worship. It is filled with Roman and Greek statuary, and busts of royal figures. Zed in amazement asks if this is God’s house. “It’s God you are seeking, is it? Well, here we are. Gods, goddesses, kings and queens. Take your pick. But their all dead. Died of boredom.”
In his “office” Friend complains that the computer did not get his instructions correct about analyzing the “design growth across all makes of cars, not just a chronological list from one manufacturer.” Friend, in trying to ease the boredom of life in the Vortex, has taken to whiling away the time investigating artifacts of the past. Interestingly, in this supposedly advance culture, such motor transport no longer exists. Does Friend want permission for a more complex program? Yes, he impatiently shouts. It will take time, but he has nothing but time; time means nothing in the Vortex. The Eternals do not even know what a clock is for.
While Zed is being “examined” again, the trial of another Eternal, George Saden, is now on the view screen. He is accused of “transmitting a negative aura in second level.” He denies this is so; “I have studied our social, emotional substructures for 140 years. These thoughts are constructive criticisms. I am innocent of psychic violence.”
Friend knows he’s lying, and Saden will likely get at least six months of aging as punishment. “I’m getting old myself. Three months here, a year there. These sentences add up. So if you’re bad often enough, you’ll die.” Zed asks him why he just doesn’t commit suicide; Friend claims he has “killed” himself many times, but the “tabernacle” rebuilds him, just as it is “rebuilding” Arthur Frayn, apparently by genetic sequencing.
Zed is used to do manual labor,
even pulling a cart like an ox.
In order to see what “immortality” looks like, he and Friend visit the Renegades, who “are condemned to an eternity of senility. We provide them with food, but they are shunned. They are malicious and vicious.”
Then they view the Apathetics, who are Eternals who have become so bored with life that they have become emotionless zombies without apparent thought processes. However, after Zed fails to draw any response from one of the women, his sudden expression of violence by tossing a barrel appears to draw some sign of life within them.
Later, before the vote to punish George Saden he confesses to the charges, but pleads mercy. “I tried to suppress these thoughts, but they leaked out in second level through the head wound of my third death (apparently a suicide attempt). I was imperfectly repaired.” But he is as much a “rebel” as Friend. He suddenly and angrily denies all that he just said: “I think what I think.” Friend is impressed by his courage to speak his true thoughts. “I’m with you George, I hate you all, especially me.” Nearly all the votes are against Saden, and he is sentenced to five years aging. Friend admits he voted for him, but it’s no good. Nothing ever changes in the Vortex. Friend observes that the “disease” infecting the Apathetics is “slowly creeping through all the Vortexes.” Zardoz/Arthur had commanded the Exterminators to grow crops to provide food these Apathetics and Renegades.
Later, Consuella is instructing the group on penis erection and how it is “one of the many unsolved evolutionary mysteries of sexuality. Every society has an elaborate subculture devoted to erotic stimulation. We all know the physical process involved but not the link between stimulus and response. Sexuality declined because we no longer needed to procreate. We are no longer victims of this violent, convulsive act that which so debased women and betrayed men.” She then sets out to determine what stimulates penis erection in Zed by showing him a few erotic images. None of them work on him. Then it is observed that Zed appears to have an erection stimulated by Consuella herself. Friend chuckles “Consuella’s done the trick herself.”
Later, Consuella is observing the sleeping Zed. “The brutal is now in fourth hour of unconscious sleep. It’s astonishing that Homo sapiens spends so much time in this vulnerable state. At the mercy of its enemies.” She tests his response to “danger stimuli” while asleep, but the apparently “faking” Zed grabs her wrist. Out of curiosity she asks him if he likes sleeping, and Zed replies he does, because it allows him to “dream.”
May determines that Zed has high breeding potential; he is a second or third generation mutant, with a large brain and total recall, so he is physically and mentally superior to any of the Eternals, who are slowly atrophying mentally and emotionally. He can be anything, do anything. Consuella insists that he must be destroyed, because he can destroy their world. May, like Friend, will however continue to protect him; Friend wants him around to cause a “disturbance” to ease the boredom, but May’s interest in him will take a “physical” turn.
In the Vortex, each member has to take turns cooking a meal for the group without help. Friend has Zed serving food. Consuella orders him to “put that thing outside.” No one else seems disturbed by his presence, so Friend calls for “another boringly democratic vote.” Consuella insists that “It’s fundamental to our society that we do everything on a basis of absolute equality.” Friend continues to tread on dangerous ground, announcing that he thinks they need “more Zeds to do the work. We have eternal life yet we sentence ourselves to drudgery. I tell you I’m sick of 200 years of washing up. And I’m sick of pitting my bare hands against the blind, brute stupidity of nature.”
Realizing that his life is at stake, Zed whispers to May to intervene. She informs the group that Consuella is right and Zed should be kept for study or do menial work on the land, but not as a servant. Consuella, fearful that Zed is introducing “dangerous” emotional responses in the Vortex, still insists that he must be destroyed. A vote is taken that will allow May one more week to complete her experiments, and then Zed will be terminated. Avalow warns that “The monster is a mirror, and when we look at him we look into our own hidden faces.” The group is called to meditate at second level. It is not clear what “second level” meditation actually is, since it is more than just a replacement for sleep.
On the Internet, there doesn’t seem to be much of a theory about what “second-level” means in Zardoz, but it is possibly a state where there is a melding of thought where a particularly idea is permanently fixed on the mind, and if it is rejected, then punishment ensues. Thus Friend refuses to go to “second level” because it means erasing his individuality. “No. I will not go to second level. No. I will not go to second level with you! I will not be one mind with you! I know what May wants with Zed. The vortex is an obscenity. I hate all women.” What he means is that it is the matriarchy that is all-controlling, and insists on emotional atrophy and denying his freedom of thought. It is determined that he is beyond “redemption” and is a “renegade.” He must be cast out.
Disturbed by what has happened to Friend, Zed runs out to the edge of the Vortex, where he signals to his fellow Exterminators waiting outside of it. He seeks out Friend, who has been cast in with the other Renegades. Only half of Friend’s face has been aged, and he looks disfigured rather than aged.
He tells Zed that this is his fault, and telling the rest “Now hear this you old farts. Meet this creature from the outside world. This man has the gift of death. He can mete it out, and he can die himself. Shall we give him back to death?” Zed is attacked by the Renegades, but escapes their clutches.
Friend tells Zed that May wants to use him to “spawn another generation to suffer our agonies.” Zed wants to know what Friend wants to happen, and it is “sweet death, oblivion…for everybody. An end to the human race that has plagued this pretty planet for far too long.” Zed tells him he “stinks of despair” and should “fight back,” even if that means fighting for death. Learning that only by destroying the tabernacle which controls everything in the Vortex can death occur, Zed is led to “one of the geniuses who created it,” an old, bed-ridden man—who found he couldn’t live with immortality and rebelled, and his “grateful people” consigned him to this condition. The old man tells Zed to speak to May.
May insists that if Zed wants the truth, he must give it. Zed repeats the story of Zardoz and what he demanded of the Exterminators, and what he promised them for obedience. “Then one day something happened. It changed everything. I lost my innocence. A face in a window. Who was he? I don’t know. He wore a mask. He led me on, like a game.” He was shown a book by the unseen man, which Zed used to learn to read.
“I read everything. I learnt all that had been hidden from me. Then one day, I found the book.” It was all a trick. “Zardoz said no more killing. He told us to take prisoners to make slaves to cultivate instead of kill to grow wheat. Zardoz betrayed us. We were hunters not farmers.” The book that changed everything was The Wizard of Oz (*****zard**Oz). It “was a fairy story about an old man who frightened people with a loud voice and big mask. But remember the end of the story. They looked behind the mask and found the truth. I looked behind the mask and I saw the truth…Zardoz.”
Zardoz made them killers. Zed finally admits he and his fellow Exterminators were less interested in the truth now, but in revenge. He had stowed away in the stone head to seek revenge against those who were responsible for using them. May admits to feelings of “revenge” herself, and she and Zed begin to have a sexual coupling.
But Consuella interrupts them. “So this is your scientific investigation. There is another word for it—bestiality. For this you will be aged 50 years, no man woman or beast will ever desire you again.” May defends herself against the “killer look,” but Zed interrupts and Consuella is stunned when her “look” doesn’t seem to have the expected effect on him. Zed does not die as expected, but he is blinded. The fearful Consuella sees that “We can no longer quell him. He’s out of control. We must now become hunters and killers ourselves.”
Avalow now appears and takes the
blind Zed with her, and uses a leaf with healing properties to restore his
sight, and he “will see more and deeper than you ever saw before."
She goes on "I see now why you are here. You are the one. The liberator. Death. I will help you if, when the time comes, you will set me free.” Zed has great strength, but when that strength fails him, Avalow gives him another leaf to eat “when the need arises.”
Zed tells her that “This place is built on lies and suffering. How could you do what you did to us?” Avalow insists that “The world was dying. We took all that was good, and made an oasis here. We few, the rich, the powerful, the clever cut ourselves off to guard the knowledge and treasure of civilization and the world plunged into a dark age. To do this, we had to harden our hearts against the suffering outside.
We are custodians of the past for an unknown future. You are the price we now pay for that isolation. You have brought hate and anger into the vortex to infect us all.” This infection is now apparent, with the Eternals led by Consuella are now seen trying to reach him to kill him.
Zed escapes and reaching the edge of the Vortex, directing the other Exterminators on where to enter it.
Zed hides out among the Apathetics, who after being exposed to his sweat suddenly come alive again. Zed loses his strength, but regains it by eating the leaf he was given. Meanwhile a wild party ensues: “It’s a miracle. We’re Apathetics. We started chasing the brutal. We got excited, We saw someone, we thought it was him. It wasn’t, but we killed him anyways. And then we felt desire.” Some of the Apathetics are now seen having sexual intercourse.
“Look at the excitement you’ve caused you naughty girl,” Friend says to Zed, who unwillingly is wearing a wedding dress to conceal his identity from Consuella, who arrives calling for securing all weapons and food supplies, and giving orders on where to search for him. “If you find the brutal destroy immediately.”
Friend sends for May to come to the sanctuary with the statuary. May tells him the violence and destruction must stop. Friend replies that it is too late, there’s no going back. May still believes the Vortex can be saved with a new breed and time, but Friend points that even eternity wasn’t enough time to do that. Zed tells her that “This place is against life. It must die.” May tells him she has her followers, who if he inseminates them all, will teach Zed all they know, give him all they have. “Perhaps you can break the tabernacle, or be broken.” There follows a sequence lasting a few minutes showing this transfer of knowledge done through a psychedelic “osmosis,” during which Zed has sexual intercourse with the women.
Zed asks Friend what all this this
technology was for; he is told that it was for space travel to the distant
stars. Did he go? Yes. Another dead end.” Friend relates how the founders had
created the tabernacle and directed it to erase all information in regard to
its construction, so no one can destroy it “if we ever crave for death.” But only the young people who were nurtured in this state could adapt to it; their elders found they could not.
As long as the tabernacle exists, knowledge will never die, “but go forward to perfection.” But as Friend confesses, “we applied ourselves to the unsolved mysteries of the universe, but even with infinite time and the help of the tabernacle, our minds were not up to it. We failed, and now we’re trapped by our own devices.”
The tabernacle is supposedly indestructible, but Zed has a more powerful mind than the Eternals, and he may break into it, with the help of the crystal he has been given by Avalow, which will improve his insight. When he can actually “see” into this crystal, then he will be ready. It isn’t clear what this new-age verbiage means, but Zed presumably intends its destruction.
Zed encounters the reconstructed Arthur Frayn.
After some clever banter, he gives Zed what looks like a crystal ball. Does he have anything to tell Zed? Does see anything in the ball? No. Then he has nothing to tell him. While Zed is examining the ball, Consuella comes up from behind him with a knife in hand. “I’ve ached for this moment.” Zed tells her she cannot kill him; "the hunt is always better than the kill.” She admits that in hunting him, she has become like him. She has destroyed what she sought to defend; Zed quotes Nietzsche: “He who fights too long against dragons becomes a dragon himself.” Knowing the end is inevitable, Consuella chooses to go with Zed, telling him that she will “would fill you with life, and love.” Zed also confesses love for her, and “if he lives, they will live together.” When the search party arrives, Consuella directs them elsewhere.
The tabernacle still must be destroyed if death is to occur for the Eternals. It recognizes that Zed is trying to destroy it, and is fighting against him. It tries to convince him that destroying it is akin to killing God with all its infinite wisdom. But Zed finds a way to penetrate the tabernacle that exists within the crystal, which appears to be a maze of mirrors. Zed eventually fires his gun at and kills his former Exterminator self. He has found the flaw in the tabernacle, and has destroyed it, “We are gone. You are alone.”
The tabernacle is destroyed (it is not explained exactly how), and the temporarily disabled Zed is revived by Consuella. Zed now has the power of the Eternals, and he leads away the troop that have now all become “renegades” themselves, using his “aura” to keep the other Eternals at bay.
Reaching the old man, he tells Zed that what was done
had to be done: “We challenged the
natural order, the Vortex is an offense against nature. She had to find a way
to destroy us, Battle of wills. So she made you. We forced the hand of
evolution.” He then dies, which confirms that the tabernacle’s power is no
more, after which the stone head is seen crashing to the ground.
Zed leads May and her followers (all impregnated by Zed) to the edge of the Vortex and gives her instructions on how to pass through it. He gives her the crystal for their sons and daughters to look into and gain "insight." Zed admits that his old life is no more.
Meanwhile, the Renegades are all dying of delayed old age, and the Exterminators who have penetrated the Vortex are killing the rest of the now powerless Eternals.
Zed is not to blame, says Consuella, and Arthur Frayn adds “We destroyed ourselves—our death wish was devious and deep.” He claims credit for “breeding” and leading Zed to this point, while Zed points out that the tabernacle bred and led him as well. Friend sees the irony in all of this. “Arthur, we’ve all been used, and reused, and abused. Death approaches. We are all mortal again. Now we can say yes to death, but never again no.” They suggest killing each other, but are killed by the Exterminators first. For Friend, dying, “It was all a joke” anyways.
Zed’s friends call for him. But he is gone, he is no longer one of them. He and Consuella have disappeared in what is either a cave or the stone head. They have a son, and they are shown standing together, growing older and finally into dust.
There is the outline of two hand prints next to Zed’s now rusted pistol. What this means is unclear, just another “puzzle” to ponder; perhaps it is just “evidence” of a human presence.
To be honest, Zardoz actually makes more sense than early critics gave it credit for, but more surprisingly it has something to say about society today that Boorman probably couldn’t have foreseen. In his mostly unhelpful audio commentary, Boorman states that his intention was a speculation on the nature of “God” and how people live in the “afterlife.” Can humans “deal” with immortality? In that quest he wonders if he threw in too many philosophical speculations. I think not; Zardoz benefits from repeat viewing, if one is so inclined to understand what it is trying to say.
If there is a problem with this film, it is that viewers have a difficult time in taking the character of Zed seriously in his loincloth as someone whose natural mental powers are “superior” to the Eternals. One would have suspected such a character dressed in barbaric attire to be cause mayhem in such an “idyllic” environment; instead, we see Zed as simply an object of interest, a representation of desire and fear. When the Eternals become “hunters and killers” themselves, it barely makes sense, given Zed’s relatively “civilized” behavior. In fact, while Zed has killed many a brutal as he was tasked by Zardoz to do, he never kills anyone himself in the Vortex, nor threatens to.
Society in the Vortex is ruled by a matriarchy, as Boorman notes in his commentary. Consuella can be said to its “lawmaker,” May controls the acquisition of knowledge, Avalow is the “spiritual” guide, and another unnamed female is the “vote counter.” They have controlled this society by maintaining a strict adherence to mental and emotional equilibrium where only the slightest deviation in thought leads to disagreements and emotional responses that “upset” the tranquility. As Friend notes, even minor, seemingly innocuous disagreements are sources of trouble and can be punished harshly—and are pointless anyways, since change in this society is not possible.
This is also a
society in which sexual relations are not only banned, but has become obsolete,
since Eternals live “forever” and do not need to procreate. Women have been
desexualized to the point where they do not even arouse a sexual response from
a male Eternal. We suspect that Boorman takes a dim view of a society ruled by
a matriarchy, or at least in its own way just as destructive as a patriarchy,
and plants the seeds for its own demise. What we see in Zardoz is perhaps that it unknowingly foresees today’s “cancel
culture” society and gender politics tyranny. We have to be honest; if some people had their way, anything that offends them would be punished, and the offender cast out. How often have we seen this played out in recent years?
But in regard to Boorman’s stated intentions for this film, Zardoz itself is simply another “mask” behind which all “gods” exist, its image created by humans. Whether it is “real” or not isn’t the point; it’s power is being controlled by whoever the puppet-master is. In Zardoz, “God” is a human creation (the tabernacle), but humans deliberately lost control of it and it became a power unto itself. The puppet-master (in this case, Arthur Frayn) only had power so long as the tabernacle existed; once it was destroyed, that power no longer existed. Thus “God” no longer existed. Of course in our world there are forces humans simply cannot control, only alter, and usually not for the better. Humans often behave as if they are the center of the universe, although their power is only what society allows them.
Further, Zardoz suggests that “eternal life” can only be sustained between two polar opposite forms of existence: on one end, apathy, in which one loses all purpose for living and falls into a zombie state, and on the other end, rebelling against apathy and living life according to one’s own wishes and desires. In Zardoz, such people are punished by becoming too aged to enjoy such human pleasures. In the Vortex, existence means doing menial tasks in order to mediate complete boredom and the pointlessness of life without purpose. This is why the Eternals are so fascinated with Zed’s memories, which show them a world of action and purpose, albeit violent.
Zardoz suggests that humans must have some purpose in order to have a rationalization to exist, otherwise they are no more than animals. Thus we see first how the Apathetics reacted to Zed throwing a barrel—and actual human action—and the Eternals suddenly behaving as if they actually enjoyed being “hunters and killers” themselves as they hunted down Zed. “Paradise” may exist, but it isn’t a place where one can exist in happiness for long if their human nature and desires are suppressed.
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