Zardoz (1974)

Directed by John Boorman. Starring Sean Connery, John Alderton, Charlotte Rampling, Sara Kestelman, Niall Buggy, Bosco Hogan, Sally Anne Newton, Jessica Swift. [R]

Supremely self-indulgent, pretentious, and freaky-deaky weird science fiction balderdash may act high-minded in its philosophical engineering, but pomposity and an utter absence of human detail and dimension sets interest adrift early on, and the filmmakers—chiefly director/co-writer/co-producer Boorman—never provide a compass to bring us back home. Cast for his iconic masculinity and adorned only in knee-high boots, a red diaper, and crossed bandoliers, Connery looks suitably lost as a barbaric mortal (“Brutal”) studied by intellectual immortals (“Eternals”) in a post-apocalyptic future world that’s been designed in a way that confuses a mishmash of ham-fisted symbols and protean gibberish for highbrow insight. Starts with a floating head roaming a black void, but that’s got nothing on the much larger floating stone head that descends from the heavens in the next scene, deeply intoning that, “the gun is good…the penis is evil,” and then spewing the contents of at least five NRA members’ closets all over a barren field. A frivolous but spotty production, and the film makes its shallow points in such a confused way, there’s no sense that the creators even believe them! Will test the patience (and tolerance for metaphysical kitsch) of most moviegoers, but it has garnered a cult following. Boorman cameos, as do his three daughters.

33/100