A Zed & Two Noughts | Rotten Tomatoes

A Zed & Two Noughts

Released May 25, 1990

1 hr. 55 min.

Fantasy

List

79%

19 Reviews

Tomatometer

85%

2,500+ Ratings

Audience Score

Identical twins lose their wives in a car crash caused by a white swan. Both brothers are zoologists and become obsessed with the death and decay of animals. They develop a strange and unusual relationship with the woman driving the car, who is now an amputee.

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Roy M

a nightmare not suited to everyone's sensibilities... about impermanence and decay... and failure of vision (at the very end- not a true spoiler)

Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars

02/23/23

Full Review

Audience Member

i'm not sure what i think about this one; the premise is definitely weird - but the movie itself was really quite boring. i thought the random time-lapses were misplaced until the very end - which i *did* like - a tragic ending, by their own doing/obsession. so i did find this movie to be interesting, you just have to sit through a lot to get there.

Rated 3 out of 5 stars

01/20/23

Full Review

Audience Member

This one's a wild ride. It's about these twin brothers whose wives die in a freak accident, so they get obsessed with the process of death and decomposition and begin taking stop-motion photography of animals decomposing. They get them from the zoo where they happen to work. So throughout the film randomly interspersed through the plot, you watch a time lapse of larger and larger animals decomposing in time lapse with jaunty music. Another plot centers around a Vermeer obsessed veterinarian who attempts to transform his patients into replicas of those found in Vermeer's paintings. There's a lot going on here which will probably take multiple views to process. Pitch black humor.

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

01/22/23

Full Review

Audience Member

Peter Greenaway's films may be an acquired taste, and this one certainly falls into that category - a visually stylistic examination into who-knows-what.

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

02/27/23

Full Review

Audience Member

The wives of twin doctors working for a zoo are killed in a car accident. The woman in the other car survives, but loses a leg. The brothers develop an obsessive sexual relationship with her ... and a ton of other things happen. They become obsessed with death and film time lapse footage of putrefying animal corpses. A young girl learns the alphabet. They amputate the other leg because ... well, symmetry I guess. I like but don't love this film. It has a lot of Greenaway's hallmarks ... a slightly atypical, but incredible Michael Nyman score, stunning cinematography from Sacha Vierny (working with Greenaway for the first time) ... but the film is ultimately too meandering and unfocused for me.

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

02/01/23

Full Review

Audience Member

With a great score and painstaking attention to visual detail, Peter Greenaway makes you see birth and decay in a new and profound light with A Zed and Two Noughts.

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

01/29/23

Full Review

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Peter Greenaway

Director

Andréa Ferréol

Alba Bewick

Brian Deacon

Oswald Deuce

Eric Deacon

Oliver Deuce

Peter Greenaway

Writer

Kees Kasander

Producer

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David Fear

Time Out

Rated: 5/5

Nov 17, 2011

Full Review

Jeremiah Kipp

Slant Magazine

None of Greenaway's films take place in anything resembling naturalism or realism, and they don't feel modern. They're like archaic storybook adaptations of Jacobean plays illustrated by Vermeer.

Rated: 3/4

Jan 22, 2008

Full Review

Nathan Lee

Village Voice

An enjoyably decadent, ridiculously convoluted thingamajig.

Jul 5, 2007

Full Review

Anton Bitel

Projected Figures

Peter Greenaway’s painterly human bestiary is a freak accident from which you cannot look away, with an inevitable terminus

Nov 6, 2022

Full Review

Ángel Luis Inurria

El Pais (Spain)

Presumptuous, cold, distant, bad, and excessive in its length. [Full Review in Spanish]

Mar 31, 2020

Full Review

Tim Brayton

Antagony & Ecstasy

A big, over-the-top comedy, with a sense of humor probably best appreciated by misanthropic nihilists.

Rated: 8/10

Dec 5, 2016

Full Review

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Synopsis

Identical twins lose their wives in a car crash caused by a white swan. Both brothers are zoologists and become obsessed with the death and decay of animals. They develop a strange and unusual relationship with the woman driving the car, who is now an amputee.

Director: Peter Greenaway
Screenwriter: Peter Greenaway
Distributor: Skouras Pictures
Production Co: Channel Four Films, British Film Institute, Artificial Eye Film, Allarts Enterprises
Genre: Fantasy
Original Language: English
Release Date (Theaters): May 25, 1990, Wide
Release Date (Streaming): Apr 17, 2020

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