Zardoz (1974) Movie Script
I am Arthur Frayn, and I am Zardoz.
I have lived 300 years,
and I long to die,
but death is no longer possible.
I am immortal.
I present now my story,
full of mystery and intrigue,
rich in irony, and most satirical.
It is set deep in a possible future,
so none of these events have yet occurred.
But they may.
Be warned, lest you end as I.
In this tale, I am a fake god
by occupation
and a magician by inclination.
Merlin is my hero.
I am the puppet master.
I manipulate many of the characters
and events you will see.
But I am invented, too,
for your entertainment and amusement.
And you, poor creatures,
who conjured you out of the clay?
Is God in show business, too?
Zardoz!
Praise be to Zardoz!
Praise be to Zardoz!
Praise be to Zardoz!
Zardoz speaks to you, his chosen ones.
We are the chosen ones.
You have been raised up from brutality
to kill the brutals
who multiply and are legion.
To this end Zardoz, your god,
gave you the gift of the gun.
The gun is good.
The gun is good.
The penis is evil.
The penis shoots seeds
and makes new life to poison
the earth with a plague of men,
as once it was.
But the gun shoots death and purifies
the earth of the filth of brutals.
Go forth and kill.
Zardoz has spoken.
Guns! Guns!
You...
...are foolish.
I could have shown you.
Without me, you are nothing.
A bore!
How pointless!
How pointless!
Attention. Harvest produce report.
Attention. Harvest produce report.
Attention. Harvest produce report.
Attention. Harvest produce report.
Submit surpluses and needs.
Submit surpluses and needs
for intervortex barter and exchange.
Year 2293. Third harvest yield.
Vortex 4. Needs:
Soap, apples, salt, leather.
Vortex 9. Surplus:
Soap, apples, leather.
Needs: Oats, barley, carrots.
Here is a list of surpluses
and needs remaining.
Here is a list of surpluses
and needs remaining.
Here is a list of surpluses
and needs remaining.
Food.
Meat.
Who lives here?
I am Arthur Frayn.
- No.
- Vortex 4.
I am Arthur...
Vor... 4.
Arthur Frayn.
Vortex 4.
I am Ar...
Vortex 4.
I am Arthur Frayn.
Vortex 4.
Three from Vortex 8.
Four from Vortex 5.
Did you ever see such mangled limbs?
There are 14 bodies for repair.
- What is it?
- Flower.
- For what?
- Decorative.
- Do you know where you are?
- The vortex.
You come from the outlands.
You were told about the vortex?
- Zardoz says...
- What does Zardoz say?
Zardoz says if you obey him,
you will go to a vortex when you die
and there you will live for ever.
- Happily?
- Yes.
So you think you're dead?
Am I?
- You're an exterminator.
- I kill for Zardoz.
You came here in the stone head.
I don't know.
It is the only path
and passage into the vortex.
You will show me
how you come to be here.
- You have a name?
- My name is Zed.
Zed... for Zardoz.
I am an exterminator.
The memories are simple heroics.
There are no abstractions, you will notice.
It is very fragmented.
The shock of entering the vortex
could be responsible.
Zarde 312.
25 brutals exterminated.
Took a woman in his name.
Zardoz.
The place
where the sea meets the land.
It's blacked again.
It seems to be able
to control its memory.
Show us more of your work.
Zardoz made us grow wheat.
This is a more recent memory.
Cultivation has started.
- Disturbed?
- A little.
- The outlands have to be controlled.
- I've always voted against forced farming.
You eat the bread.
We have to shut ourselves off.
We have to.
This is the first visual contact with the
outlands in years... as opposed to data...
since Arthur was delegated to control them.
It is proper that we investigate.
It's better not to know.
These images will pollute us.
Quench it. Quell it.
No brutal has ever penetrated a vortex.
It therefore requires study.
Perhaps it can tell us why Arthur
has vanished so mysteriously.
May...
Please.
Is Arthur Frayn's memory transmission
still functioning?
Arthur Frayn ceased transmission
three days ago.
Replay his last memory moments.
No, play back the preceding images so we
can discover how he suffered this fall.
It is permitted only
to show the accident.
No other memory image may be shown
without the consent
of the individual concerned.
But we need to determine the location
in case he is injured
and the body has to be recovered.
Arthur Frayn died.
Reconstruction has begun.
Ah, yes. There.
That's an end to it.
- Kill it, May.
- No.
May, for our love.
- Consuella...
- Don't.
I will invoke a community vote.
- The community will follow my intuition.
- Then I will go to the vortex.
- You're hurting me.
- Consuella, this is an experiment.
We must find out how it came here.
Where is Arthur Frayn?
How did you come into the stone?
Zardoz... The stone.
Terribly exciting.
- But the suffering.
- You can't equate their feelings with ours.
It's just entertainment.
Again, this is a key image.
My father was chosen.
My mother was chosen.
Only we could breed. Only the chosen.
Selective breeding, do you think?
What has Arthur being doing
out there all these years?
He never discussed this in the vortex.
He will have to be thoroughly investigated.
No one else wanted to run the outlands.
He's an artist.
He does it with imagination.
I love to see them running.
I love the moment of their death,
when I am one with Zardoz.
Obscenely decaying flesh.
The sweet scent of putrefaction
already in the air.
He's a fine, strong beast, dear May.
- What exactly do you want to do with him?
- A full genetic study. Break its DNA code.
See if there are evolutional changes
since ours were analysed 200 years ago.
Discover any new hereditary diseases
that may have emerged
which might result in broadening
our immunisation spectrum.
Study its emotional and psychic elements
in relation to its sociology.
That all sounds respectably scientific,
but what is May's underthought?
Not long ago she was asking for new births,
although we have no death.
We are perfectly stabilised.
We said "no" to May.
Now she wants to bring in
this animal from the outside.
Think of our equilibrium. Remember
the delicate balance we must maintain.
The presence will dismay
our tranquillity.
May is a great scientist,
but she also has destructive tendencies.
We have means of controlling it.
We are not so vulnerable.
Look at it. It knows its life
is at stake,
otherwise it would rape and kill
as it always has.
- You can see the disrupting effect.
- Let's keep it.
Anything to relieve the boredom.
I want to see more of its memories.
This is a psychic disturbance.
Avalow, what does it portend
for the future?
How did we conjure up
a monster in our midst?
And why?
That is the question we must answer.
Well, you've set
the fur flying, my friend.
I wonder what's going on
inside your pea brain?
I like you, you sly old monster.
Do you hear?
For.
Against.
Verdict.
Congratulations. You live.
For three weeks.
Zed.
I'll examine him later, in the dome.
Morning, Monster. Time for work.
All right, let's stop all the nonsense,
shall we? Where's Arthur Frayn?
Ever hear the expression "if looks
could kill"? Well, here they can.
There's no need to pretend
innocence with me.
I'm in Arthur Frayn's confidence.
I know more than you think.
You're saying nothing.
All right. We'll wait and see.
Don't be sullen.
I'm gonna look after you.
Whenever you're ready to,
just ask me questions.
Anything at all.
This is where you'll be working for me each
morning. Menial tasks. Nothing too taxing.
- Is this your god's house?
- It's God you're seeking, is it?
Well, here we are.
Gods, goddesses, kings and queens.
Take your pick.
- But they're all dead.
- Dead?
Died of boredom.
That's wrong. It's wrong.
It is catalogued
according to your instructions.
I told you to analyse design growth
across all makes of car,
not just a chronological list
from one manufacturer.
A much more complex program.
Shall I seek vortex consent for a longer
program? Shall I seek vortex consent...
- Yes!
- It will take time.
There is a stackup on some circuits.
Well, I've got time, and plenty of it.
Three weeks.
Define three weeks.
21 days, 504 hours,
30,240 minutes,
one million 814,400...
Do you mean he'd never seen
a clock before?
Obviously not.
- Are you not taking food with us, May?
- No.
Come, Zed. This way.
- She's taking her studies very seriously.
- She only has three weeks.
- Do you know yet how the brutal came here?
- No conclusion.
Insufficient data received.
Go in. Go on.
- Look into the ring.
- No retina abnormalities.
Fundus normal.
Disc and retinal vessels normal.
No haemorrhages or exudates.
Macular area clear.
Attention. Continuation of the trial
of George Saden of Vortex 4.
George Saden, accused of transmitting
a negative aura in second level.
This is not so.
I have studied our social, emotional
substructures for 140 years.
These thoughts
are constructive criticisms.
Pyramidical.
I am innocent of psychic violence.
As you examine my face and eyes,
you will see that this is true.
He's lying.
Are you looking for the head, Monster?
It's gone. Off on its endless journey
from vortex to vortex.
Round and round, like me and the bread,
for ever and ever.
- Will he be punished for that?
- Of course.
But you have no police,
no exterminators.
But we discuss it endlessly.
Every little sin and misdemeanour,
raked over and over.
- So what happens to him then?
- He'll get six months at least.
- Prison?
- Ageing.
- Ageing?
- Yes. I'm getting old myself.
Three months here, a year there.
These sentences add up.
So if you're bad
often enough, you'll die.
They make you old,
but they don't let you die.
- So what's to stop you killing yourself?
- I do now and again.
But the eternal tabernacle
simply rebuilds me.
- Would you like to see immortality at work?
- Yes.
Well, get a move on, then.
This is where they live...
the renegades.
They're condemned
to an eternity of senility.
We provide them with food,
but they are shunned.
They're malicious and vicious,
so in and out fast.
I myself feel quite at home in there.
Loamer.
Gray.
I loved this girl once, Monster.
You idle apathetic!
Melancholy sight.
Grayler.
Bone.
Whoa there, boy. Whoa.
You are asked to vote at the termination
of the trial of George Saden.
Final statement from the accused begins.
I confess to the charges,
but plead mitigation.
I try to suppress these thoughts,
but they leak out in second level
through the head wound of my third death.
I was imperfectly repaired.
No. That is not true.
- I think what I think.
- That's more like it.
I'm with you, George.
I hate you all.
I hate you all.
I hate you all.
Especially me.
Vote please. Vote please.
I'm voting for him, Monster.
It won't do any good. Nothing ever does.
Absolute acquittal.
Go on, Monster.
Help yourself.
Didn't Zardoz tell you
about the apathetics?
It's a disease.
And it's slowly creeping
through all the vortexes.
That's why Zardoz made you grow crops.
To feed these people.
We can't support them any more.
Apathetic or renegade...
make your choice.
Yes. A bit frightening, isn't it?
Very good.
Now you're beginning to show yourself.
Final votes. For: Nine.
Against: 586. Undecided: 86.
Sentence: George Saden
will be aged five years.
Welcome to paradise.
Penic erection was one of the many unsolved
evolutionary mysteries of sexuality.
Every society had an elaborate subculture
devoted to erotic stimulation.
But nobody could quite
determine how this
becomes this.
We all know
the physical process involved,
but not the link
between stimulus and response.
There seems to be a correlation
with violence, with fear.
Many hanged men died with an erection.
You are all more or less aware of our
intensive researches into the subject.
Sexuality declined probably because
we no longer needed to procreate.
Eternals soon discovered that
erection was impossible to achieve.
And we are no longer victims
of this violent, convulsive act,
which so debased women and betrayed men.
This brutal, like other primates
living unselfconscious lives,
is capable of spontaneous
and reflexive erection.
As part of May's studies
of this creature,
we are trying to find once again the link
between erotic stimulation and erection.
This experiment will measure autoerotic
stimulation of the cortex leading to erection.
Play.
The tracer indicates that this image
is not erotically stimulating to the brutal.
Change.
This doesn't seem to affect him either.
Consuella's done the trick herself.
The brutal is now in fourth hour
of unconscious sleep.
It's astonishing that Homo sapiens spends
so much time in this vulnerable condition,
at the mercy of its enemies.
Is there data on sleeping patterns
of primitive people?
- Is that a priority request?
- Yes.
I'm now going to test
its waking response to danger stimuli.
Does it please you to sleep?
Yes.
Why?
I have dreams.
Sleep was necessary for man
when his waking and unconscious
lives were separated.
As eternals achieved
total consciousness,
sleep became obsolete,
and second-level meditation took its place.
Sleep was closely connected with death.
Look at it. It's you.
Your genetic structure. Your life chart.
Look.
You are a mutant.
Second, maybe third generation.
Therefore genetically stable.
Enlarged brain.
Total recall.
Your potential is...
- Your breeding potential...
- Breeding?
Frayn. How did you get into the vortex?
What is your purpose?
I'm just an exterminator.
I know nothing.
You must know that you're mentally
and physically vastly superior
to me or anyone else here.
You could be anything.
Could do anything.
- You must be destroyed.
- Why?
- Because you could destroy us.
- As you destroyed the rest of life?
Can you unknow
what you know now about me?
For the sake of science, I will keep
this knowledge from the others,
for the moment, keep you alive.
But you must follow me. Obey me.
Be circumspect. Make no disruption.
Quietly do whatever work is given you.
I will watch over you.
Get a move on, you silly beast.
Friend, put that thing outside.
Anyone else disturbed?
Let's take yet another boringly
democratic vote, shall we, Consuella?
It's Friend's day to make the food.
He must do this without help
as we all do.
It's fundamental to our society that we do
everything on a basis of absolute equality.
- And Friend knows that perfectly well.
- Yes or no?
Potatoes? Yes or no?
I say get more Zeds to do the work.
We have eternal life and yet
we sentence ourselves to drudgery.
I tell you, I'm sick of 200 years
of washing-up.
And I'm sick of pitting my bare hands
against the blind, brute stupidity of nature!
- You'd better do something about this.
- Consuella is right.
Zed is being kept here
for scientific study.
It can earn its keep on the land,
but it should not work as a servant.
Time enough has gone to finish
your study, May. Destroy it.
See how it disrupts our community.
- It is almost over.
- How can you speak such in front of Zed?
It feels. I sense that.
- Vote!
- Yes, vote!
Give your votes.
May has been given seven days
to complete her study.
Then Zed will be terminated.
The monster is a mirror,
and when we look at him,
we look into our own hidden faces.
Meditate on this at second level.
No.
No.
I will... I will not go to second level.
No.
No!
I will... I will not go
to second level with you!
I will... No!
I will not be one mind with you!
I know what... I know what
May wants with Zed.
No!
No.
The vortex is an obscenity!
I... No.
I hate all women.
Birth, fertility,
superstition.
Friend is beyond redemption.
- Renegade.
- Renegade.
Friend is renegade.
He must be cast out.
He is no longer one with us.
- Renegade.
- Cast him out.
No!
Renegade.
Renegade.
Renegade!
Caution. You are approaching
the periphery shield of Vortex 4.
Caution. You are approaching
the periphery shield of Vortex 4.
Have you seen Friend?
Friend. I seek Friend.
Friend.
I seek Friend.
Friend.
Old Friend.
This is your fault.
Now hear this, you old farts!
Meet this creature
from the outside world.
- This man has the gift of death.
- Death?
He can mete it out,
and he can die himself.
He is mortal.
- He can die!
- Die.
- Shall we give him back to death?
- Yes!
- Silent death?
- Yes!
- Glorious death?
- Yes!
May, the scientist, wants him to spawn
another generation to suffer our agonies.
Stop!
Stop!
What is it you want?
Sweet death. Oblivion.
For yourself, or for the whole vortex?
For everybody.
An end to the human race
that has plagued
this pretty planet for far too long.
You stink of despair.
Fight back.
Fight for death,
if that's what you want.
I thought at first
you were the one to help.
But it's hopeless.
All my powers have gone.
Where is it, the tabernacle?
The tabernacle is...
- I can't remember.
- Who made it?
Someone must know how to break it.
Yes.
You can meet him for yourself.
One of our founders. One of the geniuses
that discovered immortality.
He found he didn't like it for himself.
He didn't conform, so this is what
his grateful people did to him.
We want to die!
- What's the trick?
- Death.
Death.
Talk to May.
May.
May!
May!
May!
May, I want your help.
You want to destroy us. The tabernacle.
I want the truth.
You must give the truth
if you wish to receive it.
I'm ready.
- It'll burn you.
- Then burn me.
Tell me everything.
Show me pictures.
Open your mind, your memory.
Go back to the beginning.
- Open.
- Zar...
- Open.
- Zar...
- Open.
- Zardoz.
Zardoz gave us the gun.
We were the chosen ones.
What was your task?
To kill the brutals who multiply
and are legion.
We rode out. We roamed the outlands.
We killed. It was enough.
Man was born to hunt and kill.
- And then?
- Then one day...
- Yes?
- ...something happened.
It changed everything.
I lost my innocence.
A face in the window.
- Who was he?
- I don't know.
He wore a mask.
He led me on, like a game.
Why did you spare him?
Something... I don't know.
- Had you seen a book before?
- Never.
- You learnt to read?
- Yes.
- How long did it take?
- It came easy.
I read everything. I learnt
all that had been hidden from me.
I learnt what the world had been
before the darkness fell.
Then, one day, I found the book.
The book called... called...
What was the book?
What was the name of the book?
- I don't remember!
- Tell me. Show me.
- You must tell me.
- No! No!
Zardoz!
Tell me. Show me. You must tell me.
- I can't.
- Tell me how you came in the stone.
- I don't know.
- Of course you know.
- You knew Arthur was Zardoz, didn't you?
- No.
- You killed Arthur, didn't you?
- No!
Show me the whole image!
What are you doing?
You murdered your own god, by accident.
Or was it an accident?
Now show me that book.
What did you find in that book?
Show it to me.
It's a trick! A trick!
What was a trick? Tell me.
Zardoz said "stop".
He said "no more".
- No more what?
- No more killing.
- He told you to take prisoners?
- Yes.
- To make slaves?
- Yes.
- To cultivate instead of kill?
- Yes.
- To grow wheat?
- Yes!
- Did you need wheat?
- No. We ate meat.
Zardoz betrayed us.
We were hunters, not farmers.
Show how you came into the stone.
Show.
It was easy.
Each season Zardoz came down
to take our harvest.
Zardoz! Zardoz!
- Your friends were mutants, too?
- Yes.
- You had a plot?
- Yes.
- Revenge?
- The truth.
We wanted the truth.
- I told them about the book.
- Show it. What is the book?
No. No.
No! Zardoz!
Zardoz is pleased.
- So that was it.
- "The Wizard of Oz".
Zardoz.
"The Wizard of Oz" was a fairy story
about an old man who frightened people
with a loud voice and a big mask.
It was Arthur Frayn's idea.
A simple way of controlling the outlands.
But remember the end of the story.
They looked behind the mask
and found the truth.
I looked behind the mask
and I saw the truth... Zardoz.
So that was your plan...
to stow away in the head.
Yes.
What was your purpose? To kill Arthur?
To penetrate the vortex? To find a way in
for your friends to destroy us?
- He made us killers.
- Revenge. You wanted revenge.
The truth. The truth!
The truth! The truth!
The truth! The truth!
Truth or revenge?
Revenge!
Revenge.
I remember feelings such as those.
They stir in me.
So this is your scientific
investigation.
There's another word
for it... bestiality.
For this you will be aged
50 years, no less.
No man, woman or beast
will ever desire you again.
He can't see.
He's blind.
We can no longer quell him.
He's out of control.
We must now become
hunters and killers ourselves.
Come.
This will restore your sight and you will see
more and deeper than you ever saw before.
I've seen men rape an old crippled woman
in a wet ditch.
I see now why you are here.
You are the one. The liberator.
Death.
I will help you if, when the time comes,
you will set me free.
You have great strength, but there are times
when that strength will fail you.
Eat this when the need arises.
This place is built on lies,
and suffering.
How could you do what you did to us?
The world was dying.
We took all that was good,
and made an oasis here.
We few... the rich,
the powerful, the clever...
cut ourselves off to guard the knowledge
and treasures of civilisation,
as the world plunged into a dark age.
To do this, we had to harden our hearts
against the suffering outside.
We are custodians of the past
for an unknown future.
You are the price
we now pay for that isolation.
You have brought hate and anger
into the vortex to infect us all.
Kill him! Kill him!
Kill him! Kill him!
- It's indestructible!
- No! No! It can't be done.
No!
Caution. You are approaching
the periphery shield of Vortex 4.
Ride round!
He's somewhere in these buildings.
Smoke him out.
Cover the exits! Over there!
We've got him trapped!
We take life from you.
Life flows out of you and flows into us.
Get him! Get him!
Come on!
Look over here.
He's not here.
It's getting dark.
- It's him!
- They none of 'em could catch him!
But he falls into the hands
of the poor old renegades.
Death.
Bring death to you all.
Find Friend. Take me to Friend.
- What'd he say?
- Shut up!
It's a miracle. We're apathetics.
Tell us how, please!
We want some, too!
We started chasing the brutal.
We got excited.
We saw someone. We thought it was him.
It wasn't, but we killed him anyway.
And then we felt desire.
Look at the excitement you've caused,
you naughty girl.
Secure all arms,
weapons and food supplies.
Work house to house,
east to west down the valley.
If you find the brutal, destroy immediately.
He's trapped. It's only a matter of time.
Friend. Friend.
Kiss the bride, dear Friend.
Kiss the bride.
You did well. I will take the bride.
Death comes closer for us all.
Find May. Tell her
that Friend needs her.
Friend, I cannot sanction
this violence and destruction.
It's too late, May.
There's no going back.
Don't destroy the vortex.
Let us renew it. A better breed
could prosper here, given time.
Time?
Wasn't eternity enough?
This place is against life.
It must die.
I have my followers.
Inseminate us all,
and we'll teach you all we know,
give you all we have.
Perhaps you can break the tabernacle,
or be broken.
An end to eternity.
A higher form.
Revenge.
Charge!
- How much time do we have?
- We will not work in time.
You will take our knowledge
by osmosis, out of time.
We will touch-teach you,
and you will give us your seed.
...where it is assumed that E75
equals R over M74, R being the ratio...
Contradictions differ in accordance with
the different nature of different things.
...physical and geometrical assumptions.
In any given phenomenon or thing,
the unity of opposites is conditional...
"Giustizia mosse il mio alto fattore:
Fecemi la divina podestate,
la somma sapienza e 'l primo amore."
...in many different ways,
by making compensatory changes...
Jeg ville skape
den eneste kvinne sledes,
s om jeg ser at hun mtte vkne...
"Le ciel est, par-dessus le toit,
Si bleu, si calme!"
"Un arbre, par-dessus le toit..."
"Could twist the sinews of thy heart?"
"And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? And what dread feet?"
The invisible worm
That flies in the night
Has found out thy bed of secret joy
"...you pass into the city of woe."
"Through me you pass
into eternal sorrow."
"Through me you pass
among the forgotten people."
...the law of the unity of opposites
is the fundamental law of the universe.
This law operates universally... in the natural
world, human society or man's thinking.
The central nervous system no longer
appears as a self-contained organ.
Now you know all that we know.
It's a prison. A prison!
No, it's an ark. A ship.
A spaceship.
All this technology was
for travel to the distant stars.
- Did you go?
- Yes.
Another dead end.
How did it come about, the vortex?
How did it start?
They did it. They were the scientists,
the best in the world.
But they were middle-aged,
too conditioned to mortality.
They went renegade. We were their offspring
and we were born into vortex life.
We seal ourselves herewith into this...
We seal ourselves herewith
into this place of learning.
Death is banished for ever.
I direct that the tabernacle erase from us
all memories of its construction,
so we can never destroy it
if we should ever crave for death.
Here, man and the sum
of his knowledge will never die,
but go forward to perfection.
We applied ourselves
to the unsolved mysteries of the universe,
but even with infinite time
and the help of the tabernacle,
our minds were not up to it.
We failed.
And now we're trapped
by our own devices.
There is no exit.
Destroy it! Tabernacle!
Kill the tabernacle!
The tabernacle is indestructible!
This crystal shall join us,
each to each, and all to the tabernacle.
A crystal joins them. A crystal.
Now we have given you all that we are,
one gift remains which contains
everything and nothing.
Look into this.
You will see lines
running into the future.
You will make insight jumps.
When you can see into this crystal,
then you will be ready. Only then.
I see nothing inside
except my own perplexity.
Knowledge is not enough.
I have come for you.
Over here.
- We've met before, I believe.
- Arthur Frayn.
Come, now.
My brutal friends call me Zardoz.
Revenge.
Now we're even.
"Would it have been worthwhile
To have squeezed
the universe into a ball,
To roll it towards
some overwhelming question,
To say: 'I am Lazarus,
come from the dead'?"
Do you know the next line?
It's TS Eliot.
"I am Lazarus, come from the dead."
"Come back to tell you all,
I shall tell you all."
Well done! Well done!
You've learnt your lessons well.
What will you tell me?
What do you see in the ball?
- Nothing.
- Nothing?
Then I have nothing to tell you.
That way! There!
What do you see in the ball?
Consuella.
I've ached for this moment.
You cannot. You will not.
The hunt is always better than the kill.
In hunting you, I have become you.
I have destroyed
what I set out to defend.
"He who fights too long against dragons
becomes a dragon himself." Nietzsche.
I'm not like the others.
I would fill you with life.
And love.
You have given me
what no other gave... love.
If I live, we will live together.
Go now.
The brutal is not here. I was mistaken.
Refraction of light. Infinite.
Break the tabernacle, or be broken.
What do you see in the crystal ball?
When you see into the crystal,
then you will be ready.
Now I see it. I am ready.
Tabernacle, what are you?
Not permitted.
- Where are you?
- Not permitted.
Do you know me?
I have your voice print, Zed,
and your genetic code,
but only memory fragments.
Tell me about the crystal transmitter.
I cannot give information
which may threaten my own security.
Brain emissions refract
low-wavelength laser light
passing through
the crystal in the brain.
They're a code sent to you
for interpretation and storage.
- Yes or no?
- Not permitted.
A receiver must be like a transmitter.
I think you're a crystal.
In fact, this one. This diamond.
In here there is infinite storage space
for refracted light patterns.
Yes or no?
You have me in the palm of your hand.
But you could be elsewhere.
Yet I choose to be here.
- Why?
- To confront you.
Already you have learnt to see
my light wavelengths in the diamond.
Now you will try to erase
the refractions and destroy me.
Your aim is to destroy me, isn't it?
Yes.
Would you kill God?
Such vanity.
I am the sum of all these people
and all their knowledge.
I am all-seeing.
I am everywhere and nowhere.
That has often served
as a definition of God.
Would you destroy us
and all that we are?
Yes.
Would you not rather be part of us,
joined to us, a light
shining to the future?
Love us. Cherish the truth.
No!
You have penetrated me.
There is no escape.
You are within me.
Come to my centre.
Come into the centre of the crystal.
Tabernacle!
Tabernacle!
Tabernacle!
Tabernacle!
No! No!
No!
No!
You have destroyed us.
You found the flaw in the crystal.
We are gone.
You are alone.
Take him to the east door.
It's too late. He's finished.
- Consuella, no.
- Wait.
Stay close to me, inside my aura.
He's gone. I saw him. He was here.
He's disappeared into thin air.
Can you tell us how things stand?
What next?
An old man calls me.
"The voice of the turtle
is heard in the land."
I...
I remember now the way it was.
We challenged the natural order.
The vortex is an offence against Nature.
She had to find a way to destroy us.
Battle of wills.
So she made you.
We... we forced the hand of evolution.
A good death.
You've done it.
He's dead.
- Look!
- The stone head!
Take this, and let your sons
and daughters look into it.
Ride east. There you will
pass through the wall.
What will become of you?
Will you go back to your people?
There is no going back for me.
Stop! It's useless. It's over.
- The renegades are all dying like flies.
- Dying?
- Zed's not to blame. We destroyed ourselves.
- That's truer than you know.
And here I would like to claim
some credit, if I may.
You see, our death wish
was devious and deep.
As Zardoz, Zed, I was able
to choose your forefathers.
Careful genetic breeding
produced this mutant,
this slave who could free his masters.
And Friend was my accomplice.
Don't you remember the man in the library?
It was I who led you to the Wizard of Oz book.
It was I who gave you
access to the stone. It was I.
I bred you. I led you.
And I have looked into the face of the force
that put the idea in your mind.
You're bred and led yourself.
Arthur! We've all been used!
- And reused!
- And abused!
And amused!
Death approaches.
We are all mortal again.
Now we can say "yes" to death,
but never again "no".
Now we must make our farewells.
To each other, to the sun and moon,
trees and sky, earth and rock,
the landscape of our long waking dream.
Zed, the liberator,
liberate me now according
to your promise.
Do it. Do it.
All that I was is gone.
Kill me too.
- Let's kill each other, Friend.
- What?
- Proper regard for irony.
- Yes.
- One last trick.
- Oh! Ah!
Success.
It was all a joke.
I want to die.
Please!
Kill me! I want to die!
Please!
Zed!
Zed!
Zed!
Zed!
Zed!
Zed!
Zed!
Zed!
Zed!
I have lived 300 years,
and I long to die,
but death is no longer possible.
I am immortal.
I present now my story,
full of mystery and intrigue,
rich in irony, and most satirical.
It is set deep in a possible future,
so none of these events have yet occurred.
But they may.
Be warned, lest you end as I.
In this tale, I am a fake god
by occupation
and a magician by inclination.
Merlin is my hero.
I am the puppet master.
I manipulate many of the characters
and events you will see.
But I am invented, too,
for your entertainment and amusement.
And you, poor creatures,
who conjured you out of the clay?
Is God in show business, too?
Zardoz!
Praise be to Zardoz!
Praise be to Zardoz!
Praise be to Zardoz!
Zardoz speaks to you, his chosen ones.
We are the chosen ones.
You have been raised up from brutality
to kill the brutals
who multiply and are legion.
To this end Zardoz, your god,
gave you the gift of the gun.
The gun is good.
The gun is good.
The penis is evil.
The penis shoots seeds
and makes new life to poison
the earth with a plague of men,
as once it was.
But the gun shoots death and purifies
the earth of the filth of brutals.
Go forth and kill.
Zardoz has spoken.
Guns! Guns!
You...
...are foolish.
I could have shown you.
Without me, you are nothing.
A bore!
How pointless!
How pointless!
Attention. Harvest produce report.
Attention. Harvest produce report.
Attention. Harvest produce report.
Attention. Harvest produce report.
Submit surpluses and needs.
Submit surpluses and needs
for intervortex barter and exchange.
Year 2293. Third harvest yield.
Vortex 4. Needs:
Soap, apples, salt, leather.
Vortex 9. Surplus:
Soap, apples, leather.
Needs: Oats, barley, carrots.
Here is a list of surpluses
and needs remaining.
Here is a list of surpluses
and needs remaining.
Here is a list of surpluses
and needs remaining.
Food.
Meat.
Who lives here?
I am Arthur Frayn.
- No.
- Vortex 4.
I am Arthur...
Vor... 4.
Arthur Frayn.
Vortex 4.
I am Ar...
Vortex 4.
I am Arthur Frayn.
Vortex 4.
Three from Vortex 8.
Four from Vortex 5.
Did you ever see such mangled limbs?
There are 14 bodies for repair.
- What is it?
- Flower.
- For what?
- Decorative.
- Do you know where you are?
- The vortex.
You come from the outlands.
You were told about the vortex?
- Zardoz says...
- What does Zardoz say?
Zardoz says if you obey him,
you will go to a vortex when you die
and there you will live for ever.
- Happily?
- Yes.
So you think you're dead?
Am I?
- You're an exterminator.
- I kill for Zardoz.
You came here in the stone head.
I don't know.
It is the only path
and passage into the vortex.
You will show me
how you come to be here.
- You have a name?
- My name is Zed.
Zed... for Zardoz.
I am an exterminator.
The memories are simple heroics.
There are no abstractions, you will notice.
It is very fragmented.
The shock of entering the vortex
could be responsible.
Zarde 312.
25 brutals exterminated.
Took a woman in his name.
Zardoz.
The place
where the sea meets the land.
It's blacked again.
It seems to be able
to control its memory.
Show us more of your work.
Zardoz made us grow wheat.
This is a more recent memory.
Cultivation has started.
- Disturbed?
- A little.
- The outlands have to be controlled.
- I've always voted against forced farming.
You eat the bread.
We have to shut ourselves off.
We have to.
This is the first visual contact with the
outlands in years... as opposed to data...
since Arthur was delegated to control them.
It is proper that we investigate.
It's better not to know.
These images will pollute us.
Quench it. Quell it.
No brutal has ever penetrated a vortex.
It therefore requires study.
Perhaps it can tell us why Arthur
has vanished so mysteriously.
May...
Please.
Is Arthur Frayn's memory transmission
still functioning?
Arthur Frayn ceased transmission
three days ago.
Replay his last memory moments.
No, play back the preceding images so we
can discover how he suffered this fall.
It is permitted only
to show the accident.
No other memory image may be shown
without the consent
of the individual concerned.
But we need to determine the location
in case he is injured
and the body has to be recovered.
Arthur Frayn died.
Reconstruction has begun.
Ah, yes. There.
That's an end to it.
- Kill it, May.
- No.
May, for our love.
- Consuella...
- Don't.
I will invoke a community vote.
- The community will follow my intuition.
- Then I will go to the vortex.
- You're hurting me.
- Consuella, this is an experiment.
We must find out how it came here.
Where is Arthur Frayn?
How did you come into the stone?
Zardoz... The stone.
Terribly exciting.
- But the suffering.
- You can't equate their feelings with ours.
It's just entertainment.
Again, this is a key image.
My father was chosen.
My mother was chosen.
Only we could breed. Only the chosen.
Selective breeding, do you think?
What has Arthur being doing
out there all these years?
He never discussed this in the vortex.
He will have to be thoroughly investigated.
No one else wanted to run the outlands.
He's an artist.
He does it with imagination.
I love to see them running.
I love the moment of their death,
when I am one with Zardoz.
Obscenely decaying flesh.
The sweet scent of putrefaction
already in the air.
He's a fine, strong beast, dear May.
- What exactly do you want to do with him?
- A full genetic study. Break its DNA code.
See if there are evolutional changes
since ours were analysed 200 years ago.
Discover any new hereditary diseases
that may have emerged
which might result in broadening
our immunisation spectrum.
Study its emotional and psychic elements
in relation to its sociology.
That all sounds respectably scientific,
but what is May's underthought?
Not long ago she was asking for new births,
although we have no death.
We are perfectly stabilised.
We said "no" to May.
Now she wants to bring in
this animal from the outside.
Think of our equilibrium. Remember
the delicate balance we must maintain.
The presence will dismay
our tranquillity.
May is a great scientist,
but she also has destructive tendencies.
We have means of controlling it.
We are not so vulnerable.
Look at it. It knows its life
is at stake,
otherwise it would rape and kill
as it always has.
- You can see the disrupting effect.
- Let's keep it.
Anything to relieve the boredom.
I want to see more of its memories.
This is a psychic disturbance.
Avalow, what does it portend
for the future?
How did we conjure up
a monster in our midst?
And why?
That is the question we must answer.
Well, you've set
the fur flying, my friend.
I wonder what's going on
inside your pea brain?
I like you, you sly old monster.
Do you hear?
For.
Against.
Verdict.
Congratulations. You live.
For three weeks.
Zed.
I'll examine him later, in the dome.
Morning, Monster. Time for work.
All right, let's stop all the nonsense,
shall we? Where's Arthur Frayn?
Ever hear the expression "if looks
could kill"? Well, here they can.
There's no need to pretend
innocence with me.
I'm in Arthur Frayn's confidence.
I know more than you think.
You're saying nothing.
All right. We'll wait and see.
Don't be sullen.
I'm gonna look after you.
Whenever you're ready to,
just ask me questions.
Anything at all.
This is where you'll be working for me each
morning. Menial tasks. Nothing too taxing.
- Is this your god's house?
- It's God you're seeking, is it?
Well, here we are.
Gods, goddesses, kings and queens.
Take your pick.
- But they're all dead.
- Dead?
Died of boredom.
That's wrong. It's wrong.
It is catalogued
according to your instructions.
I told you to analyse design growth
across all makes of car,
not just a chronological list
from one manufacturer.
A much more complex program.
Shall I seek vortex consent for a longer
program? Shall I seek vortex consent...
- Yes!
- It will take time.
There is a stackup on some circuits.
Well, I've got time, and plenty of it.
Three weeks.
Define three weeks.
21 days, 504 hours,
30,240 minutes,
one million 814,400...
Do you mean he'd never seen
a clock before?
Obviously not.
- Are you not taking food with us, May?
- No.
Come, Zed. This way.
- She's taking her studies very seriously.
- She only has three weeks.
- Do you know yet how the brutal came here?
- No conclusion.
Insufficient data received.
Go in. Go on.
- Look into the ring.
- No retina abnormalities.
Fundus normal.
Disc and retinal vessels normal.
No haemorrhages or exudates.
Macular area clear.
Attention. Continuation of the trial
of George Saden of Vortex 4.
George Saden, accused of transmitting
a negative aura in second level.
This is not so.
I have studied our social, emotional
substructures for 140 years.
These thoughts
are constructive criticisms.
Pyramidical.
I am innocent of psychic violence.
As you examine my face and eyes,
you will see that this is true.
He's lying.
Are you looking for the head, Monster?
It's gone. Off on its endless journey
from vortex to vortex.
Round and round, like me and the bread,
for ever and ever.
- Will he be punished for that?
- Of course.
But you have no police,
no exterminators.
But we discuss it endlessly.
Every little sin and misdemeanour,
raked over and over.
- So what happens to him then?
- He'll get six months at least.
- Prison?
- Ageing.
- Ageing?
- Yes. I'm getting old myself.
Three months here, a year there.
These sentences add up.
So if you're bad
often enough, you'll die.
They make you old,
but they don't let you die.
- So what's to stop you killing yourself?
- I do now and again.
But the eternal tabernacle
simply rebuilds me.
- Would you like to see immortality at work?
- Yes.
Well, get a move on, then.
This is where they live...
the renegades.
They're condemned
to an eternity of senility.
We provide them with food,
but they are shunned.
They're malicious and vicious,
so in and out fast.
I myself feel quite at home in there.
Loamer.
Gray.
I loved this girl once, Monster.
You idle apathetic!
Melancholy sight.
Grayler.
Bone.
Whoa there, boy. Whoa.
You are asked to vote at the termination
of the trial of George Saden.
Final statement from the accused begins.
I confess to the charges,
but plead mitigation.
I try to suppress these thoughts,
but they leak out in second level
through the head wound of my third death.
I was imperfectly repaired.
No. That is not true.
- I think what I think.
- That's more like it.
I'm with you, George.
I hate you all.
I hate you all.
I hate you all.
Especially me.
Vote please. Vote please.
I'm voting for him, Monster.
It won't do any good. Nothing ever does.
Absolute acquittal.
Go on, Monster.
Help yourself.
Didn't Zardoz tell you
about the apathetics?
It's a disease.
And it's slowly creeping
through all the vortexes.
That's why Zardoz made you grow crops.
To feed these people.
We can't support them any more.
Apathetic or renegade...
make your choice.
Yes. A bit frightening, isn't it?
Very good.
Now you're beginning to show yourself.
Final votes. For: Nine.
Against: 586. Undecided: 86.
Sentence: George Saden
will be aged five years.
Welcome to paradise.
Penic erection was one of the many unsolved
evolutionary mysteries of sexuality.
Every society had an elaborate subculture
devoted to erotic stimulation.
But nobody could quite
determine how this
becomes this.
We all know
the physical process involved,
but not the link
between stimulus and response.
There seems to be a correlation
with violence, with fear.
Many hanged men died with an erection.
You are all more or less aware of our
intensive researches into the subject.
Sexuality declined probably because
we no longer needed to procreate.
Eternals soon discovered that
erection was impossible to achieve.
And we are no longer victims
of this violent, convulsive act,
which so debased women and betrayed men.
This brutal, like other primates
living unselfconscious lives,
is capable of spontaneous
and reflexive erection.
As part of May's studies
of this creature,
we are trying to find once again the link
between erotic stimulation and erection.
This experiment will measure autoerotic
stimulation of the cortex leading to erection.
Play.
The tracer indicates that this image
is not erotically stimulating to the brutal.
Change.
This doesn't seem to affect him either.
Consuella's done the trick herself.
The brutal is now in fourth hour
of unconscious sleep.
It's astonishing that Homo sapiens spends
so much time in this vulnerable condition,
at the mercy of its enemies.
Is there data on sleeping patterns
of primitive people?
- Is that a priority request?
- Yes.
I'm now going to test
its waking response to danger stimuli.
Does it please you to sleep?
Yes.
Why?
I have dreams.
Sleep was necessary for man
when his waking and unconscious
lives were separated.
As eternals achieved
total consciousness,
sleep became obsolete,
and second-level meditation took its place.
Sleep was closely connected with death.
Look at it. It's you.
Your genetic structure. Your life chart.
Look.
You are a mutant.
Second, maybe third generation.
Therefore genetically stable.
Enlarged brain.
Total recall.
Your potential is...
- Your breeding potential...
- Breeding?
Frayn. How did you get into the vortex?
What is your purpose?
I'm just an exterminator.
I know nothing.
You must know that you're mentally
and physically vastly superior
to me or anyone else here.
You could be anything.
Could do anything.
- You must be destroyed.
- Why?
- Because you could destroy us.
- As you destroyed the rest of life?
Can you unknow
what you know now about me?
For the sake of science, I will keep
this knowledge from the others,
for the moment, keep you alive.
But you must follow me. Obey me.
Be circumspect. Make no disruption.
Quietly do whatever work is given you.
I will watch over you.
Get a move on, you silly beast.
Friend, put that thing outside.
Anyone else disturbed?
Let's take yet another boringly
democratic vote, shall we, Consuella?
It's Friend's day to make the food.
He must do this without help
as we all do.
It's fundamental to our society that we do
everything on a basis of absolute equality.
- And Friend knows that perfectly well.
- Yes or no?
Potatoes? Yes or no?
I say get more Zeds to do the work.
We have eternal life and yet
we sentence ourselves to drudgery.
I tell you, I'm sick of 200 years
of washing-up.
And I'm sick of pitting my bare hands
against the blind, brute stupidity of nature!
- You'd better do something about this.
- Consuella is right.
Zed is being kept here
for scientific study.
It can earn its keep on the land,
but it should not work as a servant.
Time enough has gone to finish
your study, May. Destroy it.
See how it disrupts our community.
- It is almost over.
- How can you speak such in front of Zed?
It feels. I sense that.
- Vote!
- Yes, vote!
Give your votes.
May has been given seven days
to complete her study.
Then Zed will be terminated.
The monster is a mirror,
and when we look at him,
we look into our own hidden faces.
Meditate on this at second level.
No.
No.
I will... I will not go to second level.
No.
No!
I will... I will not go
to second level with you!
I will... No!
I will not be one mind with you!
I know what... I know what
May wants with Zed.
No!
No.
The vortex is an obscenity!
I... No.
I hate all women.
Birth, fertility,
superstition.
Friend is beyond redemption.
- Renegade.
- Renegade.
Friend is renegade.
He must be cast out.
He is no longer one with us.
- Renegade.
- Cast him out.
No!
Renegade.
Renegade.
Renegade!
Caution. You are approaching
the periphery shield of Vortex 4.
Caution. You are approaching
the periphery shield of Vortex 4.
Have you seen Friend?
Friend. I seek Friend.
Friend.
I seek Friend.
Friend.
Old Friend.
This is your fault.
Now hear this, you old farts!
Meet this creature
from the outside world.
- This man has the gift of death.
- Death?
He can mete it out,
and he can die himself.
He is mortal.
- He can die!
- Die.
- Shall we give him back to death?
- Yes!
- Silent death?
- Yes!
- Glorious death?
- Yes!
May, the scientist, wants him to spawn
another generation to suffer our agonies.
Stop!
Stop!
What is it you want?
Sweet death. Oblivion.
For yourself, or for the whole vortex?
For everybody.
An end to the human race
that has plagued
this pretty planet for far too long.
You stink of despair.
Fight back.
Fight for death,
if that's what you want.
I thought at first
you were the one to help.
But it's hopeless.
All my powers have gone.
Where is it, the tabernacle?
The tabernacle is...
- I can't remember.
- Who made it?
Someone must know how to break it.
Yes.
You can meet him for yourself.
One of our founders. One of the geniuses
that discovered immortality.
He found he didn't like it for himself.
He didn't conform, so this is what
his grateful people did to him.
We want to die!
- What's the trick?
- Death.
Death.
Talk to May.
May.
May!
May!
May!
May, I want your help.
You want to destroy us. The tabernacle.
I want the truth.
You must give the truth
if you wish to receive it.
I'm ready.
- It'll burn you.
- Then burn me.
Tell me everything.
Show me pictures.
Open your mind, your memory.
Go back to the beginning.
- Open.
- Zar...
- Open.
- Zar...
- Open.
- Zardoz.
Zardoz gave us the gun.
We were the chosen ones.
What was your task?
To kill the brutals who multiply
and are legion.
We rode out. We roamed the outlands.
We killed. It was enough.
Man was born to hunt and kill.
- And then?
- Then one day...
- Yes?
- ...something happened.
It changed everything.
I lost my innocence.
A face in the window.
- Who was he?
- I don't know.
He wore a mask.
He led me on, like a game.
Why did you spare him?
Something... I don't know.
- Had you seen a book before?
- Never.
- You learnt to read?
- Yes.
- How long did it take?
- It came easy.
I read everything. I learnt
all that had been hidden from me.
I learnt what the world had been
before the darkness fell.
Then, one day, I found the book.
The book called... called...
What was the book?
What was the name of the book?
- I don't remember!
- Tell me. Show me.
- You must tell me.
- No! No!
Zardoz!
Tell me. Show me. You must tell me.
- I can't.
- Tell me how you came in the stone.
- I don't know.
- Of course you know.
- You knew Arthur was Zardoz, didn't you?
- No.
- You killed Arthur, didn't you?
- No!
Show me the whole image!
What are you doing?
You murdered your own god, by accident.
Or was it an accident?
Now show me that book.
What did you find in that book?
Show it to me.
It's a trick! A trick!
What was a trick? Tell me.
Zardoz said "stop".
He said "no more".
- No more what?
- No more killing.
- He told you to take prisoners?
- Yes.
- To make slaves?
- Yes.
- To cultivate instead of kill?
- Yes.
- To grow wheat?
- Yes!
- Did you need wheat?
- No. We ate meat.
Zardoz betrayed us.
We were hunters, not farmers.
Show how you came into the stone.
Show.
It was easy.
Each season Zardoz came down
to take our harvest.
Zardoz! Zardoz!
- Your friends were mutants, too?
- Yes.
- You had a plot?
- Yes.
- Revenge?
- The truth.
We wanted the truth.
- I told them about the book.
- Show it. What is the book?
No. No.
No! Zardoz!
Zardoz is pleased.
- So that was it.
- "The Wizard of Oz".
Zardoz.
"The Wizard of Oz" was a fairy story
about an old man who frightened people
with a loud voice and a big mask.
It was Arthur Frayn's idea.
A simple way of controlling the outlands.
But remember the end of the story.
They looked behind the mask
and found the truth.
I looked behind the mask
and I saw the truth... Zardoz.
So that was your plan...
to stow away in the head.
Yes.
What was your purpose? To kill Arthur?
To penetrate the vortex? To find a way in
for your friends to destroy us?
- He made us killers.
- Revenge. You wanted revenge.
The truth. The truth!
The truth! The truth!
The truth! The truth!
Truth or revenge?
Revenge!
Revenge.
I remember feelings such as those.
They stir in me.
So this is your scientific
investigation.
There's another word
for it... bestiality.
For this you will be aged
50 years, no less.
No man, woman or beast
will ever desire you again.
He can't see.
He's blind.
We can no longer quell him.
He's out of control.
We must now become
hunters and killers ourselves.
Come.
This will restore your sight and you will see
more and deeper than you ever saw before.
I've seen men rape an old crippled woman
in a wet ditch.
I see now why you are here.
You are the one. The liberator.
Death.
I will help you if, when the time comes,
you will set me free.
You have great strength, but there are times
when that strength will fail you.
Eat this when the need arises.
This place is built on lies,
and suffering.
How could you do what you did to us?
The world was dying.
We took all that was good,
and made an oasis here.
We few... the rich,
the powerful, the clever...
cut ourselves off to guard the knowledge
and treasures of civilisation,
as the world plunged into a dark age.
To do this, we had to harden our hearts
against the suffering outside.
We are custodians of the past
for an unknown future.
You are the price
we now pay for that isolation.
You have brought hate and anger
into the vortex to infect us all.
Kill him! Kill him!
Kill him! Kill him!
- It's indestructible!
- No! No! It can't be done.
No!
Caution. You are approaching
the periphery shield of Vortex 4.
Ride round!
He's somewhere in these buildings.
Smoke him out.
Cover the exits! Over there!
We've got him trapped!
We take life from you.
Life flows out of you and flows into us.
Get him! Get him!
Come on!
Look over here.
He's not here.
It's getting dark.
- It's him!
- They none of 'em could catch him!
But he falls into the hands
of the poor old renegades.
Death.
Bring death to you all.
Find Friend. Take me to Friend.
- What'd he say?
- Shut up!
It's a miracle. We're apathetics.
Tell us how, please!
We want some, too!
We started chasing the brutal.
We got excited.
We saw someone. We thought it was him.
It wasn't, but we killed him anyway.
And then we felt desire.
Look at the excitement you've caused,
you naughty girl.
Secure all arms,
weapons and food supplies.
Work house to house,
east to west down the valley.
If you find the brutal, destroy immediately.
He's trapped. It's only a matter of time.
Friend. Friend.
Kiss the bride, dear Friend.
Kiss the bride.
You did well. I will take the bride.
Death comes closer for us all.
Find May. Tell her
that Friend needs her.
Friend, I cannot sanction
this violence and destruction.
It's too late, May.
There's no going back.
Don't destroy the vortex.
Let us renew it. A better breed
could prosper here, given time.
Time?
Wasn't eternity enough?
This place is against life.
It must die.
I have my followers.
Inseminate us all,
and we'll teach you all we know,
give you all we have.
Perhaps you can break the tabernacle,
or be broken.
An end to eternity.
A higher form.
Revenge.
Charge!
- How much time do we have?
- We will not work in time.
You will take our knowledge
by osmosis, out of time.
We will touch-teach you,
and you will give us your seed.
...where it is assumed that E75
equals R over M74, R being the ratio...
Contradictions differ in accordance with
the different nature of different things.
...physical and geometrical assumptions.
In any given phenomenon or thing,
the unity of opposites is conditional...
"Giustizia mosse il mio alto fattore:
Fecemi la divina podestate,
la somma sapienza e 'l primo amore."
...in many different ways,
by making compensatory changes...
Jeg ville skape
den eneste kvinne sledes,
s om jeg ser at hun mtte vkne...
"Le ciel est, par-dessus le toit,
Si bleu, si calme!"
"Un arbre, par-dessus le toit..."
"Could twist the sinews of thy heart?"
"And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? And what dread feet?"
The invisible worm
That flies in the night
Has found out thy bed of secret joy
"...you pass into the city of woe."
"Through me you pass
into eternal sorrow."
"Through me you pass
among the forgotten people."
...the law of the unity of opposites
is the fundamental law of the universe.
This law operates universally... in the natural
world, human society or man's thinking.
The central nervous system no longer
appears as a self-contained organ.
Now you know all that we know.
It's a prison. A prison!
No, it's an ark. A ship.
A spaceship.
All this technology was
for travel to the distant stars.
- Did you go?
- Yes.
Another dead end.
How did it come about, the vortex?
How did it start?
They did it. They were the scientists,
the best in the world.
But they were middle-aged,
too conditioned to mortality.
They went renegade. We were their offspring
and we were born into vortex life.
We seal ourselves herewith into this...
We seal ourselves herewith
into this place of learning.
Death is banished for ever.
I direct that the tabernacle erase from us
all memories of its construction,
so we can never destroy it
if we should ever crave for death.
Here, man and the sum
of his knowledge will never die,
but go forward to perfection.
We applied ourselves
to the unsolved mysteries of the universe,
but even with infinite time
and the help of the tabernacle,
our minds were not up to it.
We failed.
And now we're trapped
by our own devices.
There is no exit.
Destroy it! Tabernacle!
Kill the tabernacle!
The tabernacle is indestructible!
This crystal shall join us,
each to each, and all to the tabernacle.
A crystal joins them. A crystal.
Now we have given you all that we are,
one gift remains which contains
everything and nothing.
Look into this.
You will see lines
running into the future.
You will make insight jumps.
When you can see into this crystal,
then you will be ready. Only then.
I see nothing inside
except my own perplexity.
Knowledge is not enough.
I have come for you.
Over here.
- We've met before, I believe.
- Arthur Frayn.
Come, now.
My brutal friends call me Zardoz.
Revenge.
Now we're even.
"Would it have been worthwhile
To have squeezed
the universe into a ball,
To roll it towards
some overwhelming question,
To say: 'I am Lazarus,
come from the dead'?"
Do you know the next line?
It's TS Eliot.
"I am Lazarus, come from the dead."
"Come back to tell you all,
I shall tell you all."
Well done! Well done!
You've learnt your lessons well.
What will you tell me?
What do you see in the ball?
- Nothing.
- Nothing?
Then I have nothing to tell you.
That way! There!
What do you see in the ball?
Consuella.
I've ached for this moment.
You cannot. You will not.
The hunt is always better than the kill.
In hunting you, I have become you.
I have destroyed
what I set out to defend.
"He who fights too long against dragons
becomes a dragon himself." Nietzsche.
I'm not like the others.
I would fill you with life.
And love.
You have given me
what no other gave... love.
If I live, we will live together.
Go now.
The brutal is not here. I was mistaken.
Refraction of light. Infinite.
Break the tabernacle, or be broken.
What do you see in the crystal ball?
When you see into the crystal,
then you will be ready.
Now I see it. I am ready.
Tabernacle, what are you?
Not permitted.
- Where are you?
- Not permitted.
Do you know me?
I have your voice print, Zed,
and your genetic code,
but only memory fragments.
Tell me about the crystal transmitter.
I cannot give information
which may threaten my own security.
Brain emissions refract
low-wavelength laser light
passing through
the crystal in the brain.
They're a code sent to you
for interpretation and storage.
- Yes or no?
- Not permitted.
A receiver must be like a transmitter.
I think you're a crystal.
In fact, this one. This diamond.
In here there is infinite storage space
for refracted light patterns.
Yes or no?
You have me in the palm of your hand.
But you could be elsewhere.
Yet I choose to be here.
- Why?
- To confront you.
Already you have learnt to see
my light wavelengths in the diamond.
Now you will try to erase
the refractions and destroy me.
Your aim is to destroy me, isn't it?
Yes.
Would you kill God?
Such vanity.
I am the sum of all these people
and all their knowledge.
I am all-seeing.
I am everywhere and nowhere.
That has often served
as a definition of God.
Would you destroy us
and all that we are?
Yes.
Would you not rather be part of us,
joined to us, a light
shining to the future?
Love us. Cherish the truth.
No!
You have penetrated me.
There is no escape.
You are within me.
Come to my centre.
Come into the centre of the crystal.
Tabernacle!
Tabernacle!
Tabernacle!
Tabernacle!
No! No!
No!
No!
You have destroyed us.
You found the flaw in the crystal.
We are gone.
You are alone.
Take him to the east door.
It's too late. He's finished.
- Consuella, no.
- Wait.
Stay close to me, inside my aura.
He's gone. I saw him. He was here.
He's disappeared into thin air.
Can you tell us how things stand?
What next?
An old man calls me.
"The voice of the turtle
is heard in the land."
I...
I remember now the way it was.
We challenged the natural order.
The vortex is an offence against Nature.
She had to find a way to destroy us.
Battle of wills.
So she made you.
We... we forced the hand of evolution.
A good death.
You've done it.
He's dead.
- Look!
- The stone head!
Take this, and let your sons
and daughters look into it.
Ride east. There you will
pass through the wall.
What will become of you?
Will you go back to your people?
There is no going back for me.
Stop! It's useless. It's over.
- The renegades are all dying like flies.
- Dying?
- Zed's not to blame. We destroyed ourselves.
- That's truer than you know.
And here I would like to claim
some credit, if I may.
You see, our death wish
was devious and deep.
As Zardoz, Zed, I was able
to choose your forefathers.
Careful genetic breeding
produced this mutant,
this slave who could free his masters.
And Friend was my accomplice.
Don't you remember the man in the library?
It was I who led you to the Wizard of Oz book.
It was I who gave you
access to the stone. It was I.
I bred you. I led you.
And I have looked into the face of the force
that put the idea in your mind.
You're bred and led yourself.
Arthur! We've all been used!
- And reused!
- And abused!
And amused!
Death approaches.
We are all mortal again.
Now we can say "yes" to death,
but never again "no".
Now we must make our farewells.
To each other, to the sun and moon,
trees and sky, earth and rock,
the landscape of our long waking dream.
Zed, the liberator,
liberate me now according
to your promise.
Do it. Do it.
All that I was is gone.
Kill me too.
- Let's kill each other, Friend.
- What?
- Proper regard for irony.
- Yes.
- One last trick.
- Oh! Ah!
Success.
It was all a joke.
I want to die.
Please!
Kill me! I want to die!
Please!
Zed!
Zed!
Zed!
Zed!
Zed!
Zed!
Zed!
Zed!
Zed!