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A Zed and Two Noughts – 1985 Greenaway
- It’s a major leap forward for Greenaway and a clear precursor to the cook, the thief, hjs wife and her lover
- Like most of the rest of his films there’s a symbolic death ritual finale
- Also like most of the rest of his work there is a large amount of cataloging in the film- Greenaway is a pure artist but there’s also a mathematician in there- he’s very numerical and formal in his approach
- Rhythmic in the editing
- Personally the cataloging thing fits my brain (hence the website and Excel charts of movie’s I watch, etc)
- Greenaway is one of the most instantly recognizable auteurs—perverse and postmodern—there’s an abundance of twinning and detailed mise-en-scene staging
- Bird obsession in all of his films
- About 20 minutes in there’s a jaw-dropping shot of a row of columns that likes like something from Welles, Dreyer or Tarkovsky
- Again, there’s clear self-referential auteurism here- in a newspaper article Greenaway basically lays out the plot of his next two films (including belly of an architect)

- His fascination with the Zebra is clear with the juxtaposition of color
- There’s an in-film documentary on evolution and we have photo montages of decay
- The mise-en-scene is masterpiece worthy- gorgeous, symmetrical, and absolutely packed—a master of set piece arrangement
- I wonder what Greenaway thought of Cronenberg’s dead ringers which came out after and also perverse doctor twins
- The Vermeer painting is a character in the film—he’s painting the frame here and copying like he did in draughtsman
- Nothing in the film or frame is accidental or just shows up once-it’s so formally sound and tight- it all comes back
- The score is a bit of a jig and reminds me of Aronofsky’s requiem for a dream
- There’s reoccurring shots of the hospital bed- beautiful work
- The twins grow more similar and dress more and more the same as the film goes along- they don’t look anything alike to begin with
- Masterpiece
Drake2020-07-03T10:31:06+00:00
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