Zenith

I just re-watched this film. Now almost a decade old, Zenith became a cult underground thing for people in the know back then and subsequently inspired more mainstream films and series that followed its themes, most obviously Mr.Robot. While these projects took some of the ideas and the look and style of Zenith, they toned them down and made them "safe" for mass consumption. Zenith was way ahead of its time and still is. While conspiracy memes and the one percent narrative have become common place by now, the film still leaves you with a lot to process and think about.

Zenith is not a science fiction movie. It uses an imagined future to highlight contemporary issues. It is related to films like Godard's Alphaville, and has no relation to Star Trek and similar. As the credit reads, this is an experiment. It uses cinematic and literary tropes to invite the audience into a dialog about human psychology and societal convention, power and control. Before the latest corporate takeover of cinema, that wouldn't have been unusual. Nowadays, many or most viewers are conditioned to evaluate movies only in terms of budgets, spectacle, celebrity names, and how well they execute trite formulaic plots. If you don't belong to that group, this film will speak to you.

I can't emphasize this enough: I regret watching this movie. We've all wasted time on worthless movies, but I honestly wish I could "unsee" Zenith. It's unnecessarily vulgar and completely worthless. Zenith is well done in the way that a birthday cake made of rocks and muffin mix can be well done. The cinematography is okay but nothing special. Acting was okay, bordering on bad. The Story is completely weak. It's not profound, and this isn't because I didn't "Get it". I know exactly what the movie is trying to do, but it just wasn't good. The concept it tries to deliver is actually really basic. It's nothing new. And they didn't even deliver it well. The movies description is accurate. People looking for pain because they want to feel ANYTHING other than happiness. I think this movie is something like a demonstration of such yearnings. The content is weak and useless, but it does deliver plenty of "Shocking" things... for the sake of being shocking. There are SEVERAL graphic dirty sex scenes that just make you feel uneasy and dirty. There's even a vulgar sex/rape scene between a Father and his Daughter. The kinds of things that burn into your mind and you can't "unsee" them. I'm not picky about the "F bomb". I really don't mind it as long as it's not used in a vulgar sexual way. In Zenith, they used it quite a bit like that. The movie has plenty of violence, but nothing worse than many movies you may have already seen. They push the envelope pretty badly when it comes to the sex, but not all that much with the violence. Plenty of brutal beatings, gunshots etc. A mild scene of a forced abortion. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of violence, but I've seen much worse.

I continued watching this because I hoped that it had a worthwhile story. I trudged through the awful sex and porn crossing my fingers that it wouldn't have any more and the story would get better. Just more unsettling sex and a weak story.

I would say don't bother, but it's worse than that. Don't watch this, you may regret it. But seriously. Don't watch it out of curiosity now. You should be curious about it like you should be curious about what it feels like to lick a hot stove.

An exciting stand-up triple that falls frustrating short of a home run. Wonderfully original and thought-provoking story covering the dystopian topics of power structures without rule-of-law, genetic manipulation on a mass scale, mind chemical crutches, and the erosion of scholasticism. Acting, sets, and cinematography all done well, which is impressive given the film's 12 dollar and 50 cents budget. Unfortunately, many story elements get tossed in without backdrop or development (how did everyone get genetically altered as soon as 2044, especially in a world lacking the organizational framework of governments?). It feels like the too-condensed movie version of a epic-length cerebral sci-fi book series, like Herbert's Dune or Card's Ender, but sadly, no such luck. Nevertheless, Zenith is brain candy worth chewing on over and over.

I have been so fascinated by this film that I have taken the time to register on imdb only in order to recommend it. I wouldn't go so far to call this a "review."

I'm a middle-aged professor and a fan of surrealism, who discovered Zenith upon the recommendation of one of my students, who wrote a paper on it, when we were discussing conspiracy theories -fact, fiction, deliberate manipulation and interpretation- in relation to psychology, as well as culture and society at large.

I truly enjoyed this film. I had to watch it twice to pick up on all its references and themes, since there are so many here, from the obvious, like the MIlgram experiment, over the lesser known, like Aleister Crowley or Edward Bernays, to some obscure surrealist literary and cinematic quotes, which I won't reveal, as they would spoil some of the fun of discovering this film for yourself. Zenith is like an onion, where each layer that peels off will reveal something new. It deconstructs language, the genre, even the process of filmmaking, with the fast-forward/rewinds, cut-tos, etc. It's playful and irreverent, mixing the fake and the real, the truth with lies, and the comic with the tragic.

You, the viewer, have to interpret the full meaning of the narrative. This intent is obvious, and not only because of the ending. It's difficult to go more in depth here without revealing too much. The storytelling method is surrealist -think David Lynch, Bunuel or Jodorowsky. Nothing is what it seems and everything has a double meaning. There is no reassuring closure in the end, no key to find one right answer for everyone, but that's what makes it so interesting.

To me, this is a memorable film, well worth the effort. If you enjoy complex and ambiguous narratives, you will enjoy this multi-layered film. Now, let me watch it a third time and see what I have missed.