Last night's film club had in varying states of disbelief and amusement at Peter Greenaway's 1985 "A Zed and Two Noughts".
I've extolled Greenaway's cinematic style several times on these pages before, so I won't blether on too much.
This is classic stuff in Greenaway's oeuvre; surreal, very off-the-wall; sexual, morbid, a feast for the eyes, a confusion for the brain.
The plot, such as it is, concerns brothers who are both zoologists working at the same zoo. Their wives die in a freak swan-related accident and we then watch them throughout the film try to come to terms with this catastrophic event as they also struggle to find some identity and meaning in mortality and decay.
As we've come to expect from a film that originates on Planet Greenaway (population: one), this features fabulously constructed tableaux and a myriad visual allusions. In this particular film there is also something of an obsession with limblessness, just to keep one's interest up.
What else can I say - Mrs The Millbrooker and I love what PG does, he's quite, quite barking - and all the better for it. Mrs The Millbrooker likened A Zed and Two Noughts to visual poetry; you can find almost anything you want within it, perhaps regardless of whether its author intended to include what you've seen or not. I thought it rather resembled the slightly challenging end of the abstract art world. 
As we've come to expect from a film that originates on Planet Greenaway (population: one), this features fabulously constructed tableaux and a myriad visual allusions. In this particular film there is also something of an obsession with limblessness, just to keep one's interest up.What else can I say - Mrs The Millbrooker and I love what PG does, he's quite, quite barking - and all the better for it. Mrs The Millbrooker likened A Zed and Two Noughts to visual poetry; you can find almost anything you want within it, perhaps regardless of whether its author intended to include what you've seen or not. I thought it rather resembled the slightly challenging end of the abstract art world. On the film club scale: Dong wasn't there, so I've no idea how many fag breaks he took last night; Frankenkeith said that he spent half the film trying to work out what was going on, but then realised that it didn't matter and started to enjoy it; Slocombe found it very left-field and a bit gruesome; Shazzerooneypoos enjoyed it hugely and found several moments laugh-out-loud funny.
Try some Greenaway - you might like it.
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