Zed and Two Noughts starts with a violent crash of a car involving the death of the wives of the two main characters, brothers Oscar (Eric Deacon) and Oswald (Brian Deacon). A woman named Alba Bewick (Andrea Ferreol), who was behind the wheel is attacked by a swan and she loses a leg as a result of the ordeal.
The brothers accept her for the fact that she liberated them from separate lives and together with three legged suits fitting two that they are now allowed to wear they become her lovers. She on the other hand, is obsessed with symmetry and requires the removal of her other leg and later produces twins, the children of the two brothers. She is also wearing white feathers all throughout the film and the car she was driving in the beginning is also white. Later, her name will become Leda, making her into a caricature.
As a result of their wives' deaths the twins become obsessed with death and decay, you can follow the progression of the story through Oswald's films about decay of the body, progressing from apple over flamingos to humans. He measures the decay, feeling it and applying it as the main axiom of his mathematics (for the lack of better analogy).
Also, there is a 20 minutes short film "Street of Crocodiles" by the British animators, brothers Quay, who were the models for the twins within the main film.
The film is taped in and around the Rotterdam Zoo, providing it with an excellent backdrop for Greenaway's perverse, jam packed art exploring with often tedious mathematical precision. The main interest here is of course Greenaway's ability to lay out the film's visual narrative, the scenes that elucidate the themes of decay, life, doubling (as a concept existent in some languages that still have singular, double and plural pronouns) symmetry, evolution. The jokes and cross references are so tightly packed in this work that on occasion it looks as if finding the connections just takes away from the joy of the film. It is an excellent, sometimes overbearing film that often is more effective in its horror sequences, thus failing the writer's intention to search for something to excite, explain and classify.
Go To Page: 1 2
