As much as I'd like for ZPG to be some kind of lost surrealist masterpiece, I had a different response. I found it fairly routine, only slightly weirder than similar films like Soylent Green, A Boy and His Dog and even Logan's Run. It's nowhere near as weird as Zardoz.CSM126 wrote:ZPG is, officially, the most bizarre movie I've ever seen that wasn't directed by David Lynch.
Actually, I think most of the weird stuff you mention is motivated by the ecological dystopic milieu. "Music box lullabies" are to pacify the populous, keep them from becoming hysterical in the heavily polluted environment. Likewise, they spray paint the extermination chamber so people don't get upset while watching their neighbors suffocate. But of course, the real reason is so no one can see the couple make their escape at the end.All without one lick of logical explanation behind them.
Same with the "history of the 1970s" stuff - it seems to be in there as a plot device, but also as a kind of SF psych-out for audiences - you think they're at home, but the camera pulls out and you realize you're in a museum. They like that trick so much, I think they do it twice. The museum is a quaint, unsubtle way of emphasizing the differences between the present and the speculative future.
And of course the robot babies have an obvious, heavy-handed narrative function - especially taking into account the "food lines" of people waiting years (!) for one.
I guess I'm going to have to fall somewhere in the middle. Well worth watching for genre fans - especially if you like this particular period of SF - but it's no classic. Funny to see how Cuaron ripped off the ending for Children of Men, though.This is either a disastrous Frankenstein's monster of a screenplay, or a strong, clear, and utterly masterful vision of weirdness as art.