Sean Connery in a loincloth: how 'Zardoz' became one of the strangest films in history

A mustache, a loincloth, a flying totem and a verse from Eliot.

With ingredients like this, a classic of artisanal science fiction was cooked with intellectual alibis, which predominated before the triumphant emergence of

Star Wars

.

Although, of course, not everyone will be willing to assign the classic label to an artifact as peculiar as

Zardoz

, which these days celebrates its first half century of existence (and controversy).

In February 1974, now (almost) 50 years ago, British filmmaker John Boorman secluded himself in the Irish countryside to finish digesting the worst failure of his then-incipient career.

Zardoz

, his first project after the international success of

Defensa

(

Deliverance,

1972),

It failed at the box office despite its large budget, a script that Boorman was particularly proud of and the presence on its poster of a Sean Connery at the peak of his fame.

What had gone wrong?

In the words of prestigious critic Gene Siskel, practically everything.

Starting with the “narcissistic blindness” that had led the English director to try to turn a “perfectly trivial” science fiction epic into a “confusing exhortation to debauchery and a deranged apology for death.”

Boorman, in Siskel's opinion, had contracted two of the worst cinematic diseases, self-indulgence and excess.

Zardoz

was, for him, a narrative and aesthetic fiasco.

Sean Connery in the most remembered image of 'Zardoz': with long hair, a gun in his hand, high boots and... those clothes.Silver Screen Collection (Getty Images)

Half a century later, Siskel's opinion, like that of Pauline Kael, Jay Cocks, Roger Ebert and so many other professionals who hated the film without any nuances and persisted in ridiculing it, causes a certain perplexity.

We have become accustomed to considering that Boorman's is a "cult" work, that is, a rarity for film buffs with unprejudiced and empathetic palates, a discreet feast for minorities, in the wake of

Streets of Fire

(Walter Hill, 1984),

The Wicker Man

(Robin Hardy, 1973),

Big Heist in Little China

(John Carpenter, 1986) or

The Man Who Fell to Earth

(Nicolas Roeg, 1976).

As the critic Jonathan Rosenbaum would say, we are so postmodern that we have lost the habit of taking cinema literally, accustomed as we are to readings in a cornered, condescending or ironic key, and

Zardoz

lends itself perfectly to that type of reading.

Boorman was serious

But the fact is that Boorman had no intention of perpetrating a simple hooliganism.

He did intend for his film to be taken seriously.

He was aware of adding to the stew a merciless dose of countercultural kitsch and delirious esotericism, but that did not mean he gave up on

Zardoz

being a new evolutionary step in that “metaphysical” science fiction inaugurated by Stanley Kubrick with

2001: A Space Odyssey

.

Born on the banks of the Thames, in Shepperton, very close to London, in January 1933 (he has just turned 91), Boorman grew up reading books compulsively in the back room of the pub run by his parents, a middle-class couple with no education. superiors.

At the age of 20 he enlisted in the British Army.

He ended up serving as an instructor and was almost sent to the Korean War.

His great anecdote from his youth is that he was subjected to a court martial for “fostering desertion and defeatism” among the soldiers he trained, with critical comments about his country's foreign policy and its shameful subordination to the imperial project of the USA.

In his defense he argued that a large part of the opinions expressed in the barracks were based on an article in

The Times

, a respectable newspaper, and that he could not be called unpatriotic.

He was acquitted.

After leaving military life, he worked in a laundry and began training as a television producer, first at Southern Television and later at the BBC.

At the age of 30 he made a successful documentary,

Six Days to Saturday

(1962), focused on the daily routines of a football club, Swindon Town, then in the English Second Division.

John Boorman, director of 'Zardoz', in front of a poster of his creature during the promotion of the film.Sepia Times (Sepia Times/Universal Images Gro)

Catch Us If You Can

(1965), a strange and suggestive vehicle for the pop group Dave Clark Band, was his first feature film.

Then came Point Blank (1967), an elegant and amoral thriller, starring a splendid Lee Marvin in his role as a hired hitman with a paradoxical sense of justice, and the no less notable Hell in the Pacific, again with Marvin at board.

At 35 years old and with just three films under his belt, Boorman had already built a solid reputation as a versatile professional with good taste.

United Artists offered him the opportunity to embark on his first “author” project, working on his own script and with hardly any creative interference, and that crystallized in the highly estimable

Leo the Only

(1970), a particular tribute to the cinema of Federico Fellini. with Marcello Mastroianni in the role of an idle heir and fan of ornithology who tries to intervene, with more will than judgment, in the lives of the inhabitants of a modest London neighborhood.

He won the award for Best Director at the Cannes Festival and, with it, carte blanche to embark on even more personal projects.

The disturbing

Defense

, with Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds and Ned Beatty descending by canoe into the bitterest hell of rural America, showed him capable of combining critical prestige with box office success.

Although he obtained three (unsuccessful) nominations for the Oscars, in the end, the 46 million raised would become, as he himself recognized a few years later, his best endorsement, the blank check that elevated him to the level of the industry's first swords. .

How to squander your prestige on two movies

In 1972 he turned his back on Warner Bros., distributor of

Defense

, to sign an even more lucrative contract with 20th Century Fox. Shortly before, he had been on the verge of reaching an agreement with United Artists to embark on a pharaonic adaptation of

The Lord of the Rings. Rings

destined, from his point of view, to bring to light the entire metaphysical substratum of Tolkien's work and turn it into a cinematographic spectacle “that makes you think.”

The psychotropic American poster for 'Zardoz'.LMPC (LMPC via Getty Images)

That interest in setting a story of broad intellectual significance in a fantasy environment would end up crystallizing in

Zardoz

, a script written by four hands with his old friend Bill Stair.

Inspired by the mystical poetry of TS Eliot, the cycle of Arthurian legends, and the youth literature of Frank L. Baum (

The Wizard of Oz

), Boorman and Stair imagined a planet Earth at the end of the 23rd century devastated by a nuclear catastrophe and in where two species of human survivors coexist, the Eternals, a superior caste confined in an idyllic couple (the Vortex, the only truly habitable area on the planet) to which scientific progress has allowed them to achieve immortality, and the Brutals, reduced to a precarious, troglodytic existence in a vast wasteland known as the Outlands.

Fox executives were not enthusiastic about the script, but they decided to trust a Boorman who seemed in a state of grace and had also guaranteed them that one of the stars of the moment, Burt Reynolds, was going to star in the film.

The operation was about to derail in the penultimate corner when Reynolds decided to reject the role of Zed, leader of the Brutals and alleged messiah of this dystopian universe, citing scheduling problems, but guided, in reality, by his instinct and opinion. from his agent, who were not sure that a film with such an abstruse approach would come to fruition.

After a tense period of waiting, the stroke of luck arrived that made all the pieces fit together: Sean Connery, who had just turned his back, after

Diamonds Are Ever

(1971), on his ten-year stint in the James Bond series , was looking for new acting challenges and was looking forward to working with Boorman.

In reality, the then 42-year-old Scottish actor would have worked with anyone who was willing to hire him.

After a short sabbatical, he had seen the perverse effects of his long association with Agent 007: the world found it difficult to imagine him in any other role.

Driven by this fear of extreme typecasting, Connery accepted without questioning the role that Boorman offered him, even though it involved such onerous tolls as growing a Prussian sergeant's mustache or donning a little less than an implausible loincloth with cross-shaped suspenders, which would become the most remembered image of the film and, even today, a source of ridicule.

The film was shot in the Republic of Ireland, at Ardmore Studios in Bray, near Dublin, and in several surrounding locations.

Boorman also had the presence of another famous actress, Charlotte Rampling, who would also soon release the film that would finally establish her,

Night Porter.

(1974).

The filming involved a series of minor inconveniences, such as protests by locals over the nude scenes filmed outdoors or the strict control imposed in Ireland on the importation of firearms, a consequence of the activities of the IRA.

But it ended up being, in general terms, a placid production process, thanks to Boorman's relaxed and conversational style.

Connery settled in Bray, enjoying the feeling of being apart from the world, enjoying the small everyday pleasures and his reunion with the profession beyond the exhausting circus that the James Bond films had become.

Sean Connery in 1974, the year 'Zardoz' was released, resting during a game of golf. Doug McKenzie (Getty Images)

Boorman did the rest immediately, in a very intense post-production process in which he involved, for example, the process of composing an avant-garde score (“genuine 23rd century music,” he would say) by the scholar David Munrow. of the Early Music Consort.

The discretionary use of Beethoven's

Symphony No. 7

completed an acoustic landscape that Boorman intended to be “overwhelming.”

The film was released in the winter of '74, a year of great box office hits, such as

Hot Saddles, The Burning Colossus, Airport 75

and

Young Frankenstein

, and it did not have, by any means, the expected impact.

Worse, he was the object of ridicule and parody.

Connery's loincloth and bare (and hairy) chest did not go unnoticed.

Kyle Anderson, an expert in lysergic and cult cinema, considers it astonishing that John Boorman received nearly two million dollars to spend with total impunity on a film as crazy, delusional and proudly

kitsch

as this one, although he recognizes "sublime" successes such as

Zardoz

of the title, the giant stone head that flies over the Outer Lands and is revered by the most violent faction of the Brutals, a group of murderers who exterminate their fellow humans like vermin, shouting: “Guns yes, penises no.” .

The message, in Anderson's opinion, is nothing more than disconcerting gibberish, a hymn to life and a fierce invitation to avoid the conformism and apathy that translates into demented mysticism, irrational violence and morbid and uncomfortable sex.

Ingredients, in short, completely misunderstood in their time but that today give rise to a retrospective cult that has enlarged its aura.

After his spiritual retreat in Ireland, once the wounds that this epic failure left in his ego had been healed, Boorman would go down another step by signing the sequel to

The Exorcist

, (

The Exorcist II: The Heretic

, 1977) a film that even he himself detests, and then he would recover the credit with the amazing and ultimately vacuous

Excalibur

(1981).

Years later, the director would remember that

Zardoz

had been for him a “school of failure” and a cure for humility.

“When you feel on top of the world, that's when you're most likely to fall off a cliff,” he declared.

Although, to his immense luck, there is no failure that cannot become an object of worship if it has mythomaniac ammunition as thick as Sean Connery running around half-naked with a revolver in his hand or a flying head flying over a sinister fantasy wasteland.

You can follow ICON on

Facebook

,

X

,

Instagram

, or subscribe to the

Newsletter here

.