A Zed and Two Noughts

Ah, yes, Michael Nyman… I wasn’t really a big fan of his.

These shots are really well staged, but…

… but it’s all a bit jejune, innit?

The impetus for (re)watching all of these 80s arthouse movies was because I wondered why almost all the 80s arthouse directors are excluded from lists like this. It’s like everybody’s decided that the 70s had great movies, and the 90s had, but prefer to skip over the 80s.

And… I’m starting to think that’s for a very good reason?

But perhaps I’m jumping to conclusions.

For the first two thirds of this movie, I was sitting here with crossed arms and thinking “this is such sophomoric bullshit”. But then I was totally gripped by the last third, despite myself. It’s really quite something…

I wondered whether this movie got any votes at all at the S&S poll, and nope. But Greenaway did — if I count correctly (not very likely) and Google shows all results (not very likely), The Cook, The Thief, The Etc and the Etc got four votes, and The Pillow Book got two votes. So it’s not that the votes were split over a large number of Greenaway movies, either…

Anyway, I ended up respecting this movie, albeit grudgingly.

A Zed and Two Noughts. Peter Greenaway. 1985. ⚄