Strange Pair: Zardoz & Lady in the Lake

I taped them within a 24-hour period on Turner Classic Movies. I had seen Lady in the Lake (1947) several times. I have a VHS tape of Zardoz (1974).

Seeing them so close together created a bond and spurious connections.

Foremost, they contain seriously complicated narratives that encompass equally complex stories.

Also, both films strive to attain something aesthetically that ultimately would not materialize.

Zardoz starts, like Lady in the Lake, with a character, Arthur Frayn (Niall Buggy), speaking directly to the audience.

     I am Arthur Frayn, and I am Zardoz. I have lived three hundred years, and    I long to die. But death is no longer possible. I am immortal. I present now my story, full of mystery and intrigue - rich in irony, and most satirical.

Yet, Frayn is only a minor character. In his story, he will be killed and brought back to life and then killed again, the latter time seemingly for good.

Lady in the Lake is taken from a Raymond Chandler novel and came out soon after another adapted Chandler novel, The Big Sleep (1946). Never were two movies with the same character so different. Robert Montgomery also directed Lady, using a premise rare in cinema: a visual first person narrative . The only time we see Marlowe is during direct narrations to the audience and in mirrors. Thus, like Arthur Frayn, he disappears for long stretches. We see and experience what Marlowe sees, whereas Frayn creates what we see.

In Zardoz, we get a very strange story about a future divided between Immortals, who live in a protected area called The Vortex, and the Brutals. The Immortals suffer from being over-civilized. They've achieved a state of total consciousness and have wearied of it. Many of them crave an end to their immortality. One of the Brutals, an exterminator named Zed (Sean Connery), is smuggled into the community by Arthur Frayn. Zed awakens long lost feelings and the Immortals are  split over what should be done with him.

The strangeness of Lady in the Lake derives from its first person point of view. The camera’s movement is limited and we rarely see a character (all of whom are suspects in a murder) in a private moment. Further, the narrative strategy entails very long takes which affects the acting. It’s not bad acting but has an edge to it because of a very long takes. This drains the movie's naturalness and is what makes it so unlike The Big Sleep; that, and the difference between Humphrey Bogart’s Marlowe and Montgomery’s. Bogart is hard-nosed. Montgomery tries to be. Both films have the detectives making glib comments, but Lady in the Lake overcompensates in this area, although it may be the most pleasurable thing about Montgomery’s characterization. 

Zardoz and Lady in the Lake both center on quests and death. The god ‘Zardoz’ is taken from The Wizard of Oz. Zed is on a quest but doesn’t realize that he is being manipulated. He is a Chosen One introduced into the Vortex for one purpose, to destroy it. The Immortals can't kill themselves. They need an outsider, and his fellow Exterminators, to destroy them. In the process, Zed will escape with Consuella (Charlotte Rampling), who initially opposed Zed, and start a new human community.

Lady in the Lake is similar to many detective stories whence the detective solving a murder or murders is likened to a quest for an ultimate, revealing truth (Chinatown [1974], for instance). In film noir, much of the truth is finding out that you cannot trust anyone, the police are corrupt, and women will betray you. Death pervades the story as bodies pile up. The titular woman herself is dead (from the start). In the story Marlowe is narrating, he has written a story called “If I Should Die Before I Live”. He is then hired by an editor of publishing company, Adrienne Fromsett (Audrey Totter), and they have an antagonistic relationship. He doesn’t trust her while knowing full well he’s attracted to her. Even when she helps him, we sense something is wrong. However, she is not the murderer and surprisingly goes off with Marlowe to marry him just as Consuella went off with Zed.

Zardoz's conceit centers on the idea that death gives meaning to life. Our attempts to find immortality will end up not quite killing us. Rather, we shall suffer more and more. One group of Immortals, the Apathetics, have a disease that has crippled them physically and emotionally. They represent an accelerated form of the malaise taking over the other Immortals. Inevitably, the desire to die grows, leading to the type of dialogue below that has given the film its reputation (for pretentiousness? goofiness?)                                                                   

        Zed: What is it you want?

        Friend: Sweet death. Oblivion.

        Zed: For yourself, or for the whole Vortex?

        Friend: For Everybody. An end to the human race. It has plagued this pretty planet for far too long.

        Zed: You stink of despair. Fight back! Fight for death, if that's what you want.

Zardoz’s director, John Boorman has these themes appear over in films like Point Blank (1967), Deliverance (1972), Excalibur (1982), Hope and Glory (1987) and The General (1998). The quests of his characters often lead to death and, occasionally, regeneration. In particular, the King Arthur legend appears as a major force in his work. He even has Arthur Frayn say: “In this tale, I am a fake god by occupation - and a magician, by inclination. Merlin is my hero! I am the puppet master.”