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Following the positive reception for The Draughtsman's Contract (1981), Peter
Greenaway felt a pressure to deliver an equally successful second feature.
Countering this feeling, he loaded A Zed & Two Noughts with a plethora of
themes and ideas.
After the notable lack of dialogue during the first five minutes, the story
unfolds in a way that plays with the passing of time in a critical and
conceptual manner. The film is, in some senses, anti-narrative, and mirrors its
concern with life and evolution in its form (Charles Darwin is a hero of
Greenaway's, although Zed still references the creationist story of Eden). It
begins with the death of the zoologists' wives and, although this event becomes
a cause to react against and ultimately brings life, the film goes full circle
to end with the death of the twins themselves, prompting the question, 'what
happens next?' The time between the two moments of death, with the creation,
gestation and birth of twin sons, appears to be a year. This neatly allies with
the suggestion that if the world were one year old then man would have been born
on December 31st - in effect, where the film ends.
The passage of this year is partially traversed or speeded-up with the twin's
time-lapse films of decomposing animals - films not so far removed, in their
technique, from the stop-motion animation films made by the Brothers Quay. The
Quays, also identical twins, featured previously in Greenaway's The Falls
(1980), and were an important initial inspiration for A Zed & Two Noughts.
The film began Greenaway's ongoing collaboration with the cinematographer
Sacha Vierny, who had worked previously with Alain Resnais. Vierny tried to
light every scene a different way - by candlelight, sunlight, even by the light
of a rainbow - noting light's vital relationship to life. The importance of
light in the film is also stressed in the many references to the painter
Vermeer, another keen observer of light.
The title alludes in part to the two twins, Oswald
and Oliver and to the sense of deconstruction in the film (note the consistent
suggestions of containment through framing - like a zoo cage), but also, despite
being shot in Amsterdam, to a particular Englishness or Britishness. The
British, of course, have zeds, while Americans have zees.
William Fowler
*This film is available on BFI DVD.
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1. The land of the legless (1:39)
Production stills
