Z.P.G.

Saw Z.P.G., a 1970s sci-fi, it predates Star Wars and is therefore a moody think-piece about man's relationship with his fellow man and with society at large. The film takes place in some authoritarian dystopia where floating blimps blare cheery music intercut with feedback noises because well, you know, dystopia 'n all. The central problem here is that no one is allowed to have children for the next 30 years. This causes quite a bit of dismay among the adult populace, but rules is rules. Predictably, the protagonists are a wealthy couple who of course catch the baby-fever and must find some way to deal with it.

The central preoccupation of the film is how our selfish natures will ultimately destroy us all. At one point, a character drops a ration-book and several hands instantly reach for it. Each grabbing a corner, the book is torn to shreds. There are always crowds of bovine, jump-suited people, standing placidly or walking slowly in the background of most shots. The whole baby thing comes about as a result of overpopulation and there is a constant, pea-soup fog that we are told comes from the greedy industrialists of yore. Subtle this movie is not.

I was fairly frustrated by how ham-fisted I found the film. They hammer the evils of selfishness constantly and mix this with bizarre artistic choices. For example, when a couple is caught with an illicit baby, they are condemned to death by suffocation. A perspex dome descends from the sky, trapping them. The dome is then industriously spray-painted pink and left alone. How odd. A few things they get right, like the omnipresent screens through which our wealthy protagonists shop and make phone calls, but then other things they get wrong, like the futuristic library made up of view-screens which are still, for some reason, organized alphabetically. Another odd thing: several times the action pauses and an audience of future-folk applaud. The first time this happened I thought they were revealing the protagonists to be actors of some kind, but it happens again in totally inappropriate situations. Deeply confused by this, I dismiss it as 70s-era nuttiness, but I don't really know.

Anyway, the film is essentially a less subtle Soylent Green (which is saying something because Soylent was never meant to be made of people. That was added in to goose the story a little (and also to get away from the whole birth-control = population explosion stuff which was the point of the book, apparently.)) It features a lot of hammy acting (check out the blond moaning "my bay-bee, my bay-bee!" near the end. Ell-oh-ell.) There's also some strange future-stuff floating about. The whole thing was just sort of overstuffed. It felt like it didn't have a huge amount to say, but repeated what it did have ad nauseum.