The similarity in playful, list-style structure is not accidental Greenaway is an outspoken admirer of Borges work.
“(1) Those that belong to the Emperor, (2) embalmed ones, (3) those that are trained, (4) suckling pigs, (5) mermaids, (6) fabulous ones, (7) stray dogs, (8) those included in the present classification, (9) those that tremble as if they were mad, (10) innumerable ones, (11) those drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (12) others, (13) those that have just broken a flower vase, (14) those that from a long way off look like flies.” This obsessive plethora of living taxonomies is reminiscent of Jorge Luis Borges’s “Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge,” which divides animals into categories as such: The arrangement and rearrangement of animals by different categories is a running motif, with each character defined by their preferred version of zoo:ġ) Fallast owns the zoo as it currently stands.Ģ) Oliver and Oswald strive to return the animals to the freedom of nature.ģ) Alba Bewick owns a gated-off snail-only zoo called L’Escargot.Ĥ) Venus de Milo pens a story about a sexual fantasy zoo called “The Obscene Animal Enclosure.”ĥ) Van Hoyten constructs an exclusive zoo for black-and-white animals because he is color-blind.Ħ) Felipe Arc-en-Ciel proposes a zoo of mythological beasts. Some examples:ġ) The alphabet: the title, the names of Alba Bewick’s children, Beta’s interspersed listing of an animal beginning with each letter.Ģ) Numbers: the reoccurrences of “26”, particularly in relationship to the number of letters in the alphabet.ģ) Colors: Van Hoyten’s unhealthy obsession with black and white animals.Ĥ) The evolution of life: Attenborough’s “Life on Earth,” the choices of animals for the time-lapse experiments, the zoo.
The film is not driven by plot or character, but instead, it adopts pre-existing organizational systems, lists and taxonomies. The structure of “A Zed and Two Noughts” is closer to an elaborate puzzle-box then than a traditional narrative of the 19th century literary mold, which Greenaway vocally despised. The very struggle to understand our roots (historically, genealogically, philosophically, spiritually and so forth) is central to the ambiguity that saturates “A Zed and Two Noughts.” Reoccurrences of the knowledge/reality/meaning dilemma come up over and over again:ġ) Venus de Milo proposes a reinterpretation of the Sphinx’s riddle about man, the earliest recorded abstract puzzle.Ģ) References to Vermeer and Van Meegeren engage with the authenticity of authorship and art.ģ) Beta successfully disproves that the brothers’ scientific training is equivalent to omnipotence (by humorously showing that they can’t identify the color of a woman’s knickers).Ĥ) Oliver endlessly questions the disturbing role of coincidences in modern life. The early juxtaposition of two opposing creation stories immediately introduces the friction of truth.
Near the beginning of the movie, Oswald references Adam and Eve and soon after clips from “Life on Earth” begins describing the creation of life. In a somewhat unusual and alienating fashion, Greenaway invites the viewer to relate to his characters through a philosophical goose chase and to share in their repeated frustration. The investigation and rejection of traditional notions of knowledge, reality, meaning and truth is a guiding principle for Greenaway’s film.
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