Zed & Two Noughts / Falls (BLU-RAY)

A Zed & Two Noughts (1985) is Peter Greenaway’s beautifully disturbing and darkly humorous take on erotic obsession and death. In a horrific automobile-swan accident in front of the Rotterdam Zoo, two women die and a third, Alba (Andrea Ferréol), loses her leg. The two widowers, twin zoologists Oliver and Oswald (Eric and Brian Deacon, in roles originally offered to the Quay Brothers), fixate on their wives’ bodies, and slowly become obsessed with evolution and decomposition—even going as far as to meticulously craft exquisitely morbid time-lapsed films of decaying creatures. The plot thickens when a mad surgeon schemes to use Alba as a subject in his experiments with animal symmetry and Vermeer homage. Full of surprises and magnificent conundrums, A ZED AND TWO NOUGHTS is a perversely comic and teasing treat for the mind and senses. The Falls (1980) is arguably the most significant film of Peter Greenaway’s prolific career. Shot as a pseudo-documentary, this magnum opus dazzlingly details 92 case histories of people who have been affected by the VUE (Violent Unknown Event)—a mysterious, apocalyptic phenomenon related to birds, flying, and bizarre invented languages.