![]() Greenaway’s work exists in its own hermetically sealed universe, as far from conventional “reality” as possible. If all this sounds a mite absurd…well, it is. Inevitably, Alba dies, after which the twins decide to conduct their final photographic experiment: filming their own deaths. Oliver and Oswald, for their part, are looking more and more alike, and even take to fitting their bodies into a single shirt and pants. Alba, meanwhile, has her remaining leg amputated and eventually finds herself pregnant by Oliver and Oswald, resulting in the unexpected birth of twin boys. They also become obsessed with decay, and take to utilizing time-lapse photography documenting the decomposition of elements, starting with fruit and progressing to dead animals. Understandably despondent, the twins somehow end up romancing the car’s driver Alba, who lost a leg-and an unborn child-in the accident. Their wives are killed in a car crash when a white swan escapes from a nearby zoo and collides with the vehicle. ![]() Oliver and Oswald Deuce are identical twins, although they don’t really look alike when the film starts. Other Greenaway trademarks are the wide-eyed little girl who impassively observes the action (and who gets off much easier than the boy who circumcises himself in Greenaway’s DROWNING BY NUMBERS, or the one who gets disemboweled in THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE AND HER LOVER) and an overriding obsession with cataloguing and codifying (in DROWINING BY NUMBERS there were numbers hidden in various places throughout the film), which here takes the form of periodic recitations of different animal species by supporting characters. 1985’s A ZED AND TWO NOUGHTS is probably Greenaway’s most potent exploration yet of his favorite themes: sex, death and decay.Ĭinematographer Sacha Vierny is a Greenaway mainstay, as was-at least until 1990’s PROSPERO’S BOOKS-composer Michael Nyman (which explains in part why Greenaway’s post 1990 films tend to be markedly less satisfying than the others). His innovative, heavily symbolic films are characterized by an unnerving air of cerebral detachment and overriding obsession with all things grotesque. Peter Greenaway has made quite a few idiosyncratic films since his debut feature, the three hour BBC mock documentary THE FALLS, in 1980. I admittedly don’t know exactly what this film is, but can say for certain that A ZED AND TWO NOUGHTS, an early feature by England’s Peter Greenaway, is a morbid and fascinating oddity unlike anything else.
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