Sundance: "Z for Zachariah" Creaks Under The Weight Of Its Allegory

Michael C here. It's only fitting that I wrap up my Sundance reviews at the end of the world. I could not stop my brain from rebelling throughout Craig Zobel’s Z for Zachariah.

I understood the director was going for a story that worked on an allegorical level. I respected how well Zobel built up a world with just three actors and a handful of rustic locales by letting our imaginations fill in the rest. I appreciated the craft on display. Zobel is a skilled visual storyteller aided immensely by Tim Orr’s evocative photography. The trio of actors playing maybe the last three people alive all do fine work, particularly Margot Robbie, showing impressive range in a character many miles removed from her Wolf of Wall Street trophy wife. I got all the reasons why the film should work, but it never snapped to life for me, maybe because the characters were all too laden with symbolism to feel like real people capable of acting spontaneously. I wanted the cast to quit it with the furtive glances and address the issues everyone in the audience figured out five scenes ago. [More...]

Z for Zachariah picks up a year or so after an unspecified disaster has left the surface of the Earth radioactive, wiping out the human population, save for a small town girl named Ann (Margot Robbie) whose farm and the surrounding valley is miraculously untouched by the fallout. Into her boundaries wanders Loomis (Chiwetel Ejiofor) who weeps tears of joy at finding inhabitable land. The absorbing first act of the film is occupied watching these two traumatized people circle each other, silently acknowledge the unavoidable logic of their pairing, and muster up the will to go on living, maybe even find some small measure of happiness. Their tentative courtship goes awry with the appearance of an interloper in the form of Caleb (Chris Pine), a handsome good ol’ boy who waited out the apocalypse at the bottom of a mineshaft. Caleb and Loomis – and everyone in the audience – have no trouble doing the math. We wait to see how balance will be restored to this new Eden.

The title is implied by a Biblical picture book Loomis spots early in the film called “A is for Adam” and the film doesn’t get any more subtle from there. Loomis plan is to pull down the church in which Ann’s father used to preach so they can use the lumber to construct a mill to power a generator. Caleb is agreeable on the service, grateful to be given shelter and saved from starvation, but he immediately works to drive a wedge between the Loomis and Ann, whispering to her in private that the two remaining people of faith need to be united against the atheistic scientist. One need not be an English major to parse the symbolism at work.

Once the dynamic is set, events plays out mostly as we expect, with Zobel slowly ratcheting up the tension and poor Ann looking like she is going to pitch a fit if one (or both) of these men don’t take a break from eyeballing each other dramatically long enough to have sex with her. I desperately wanted the film to zig or zag or do something other than go straight down the line to its inevitable conclusion. Could no one broach the topic of an open relationship? What if the two men formed a bond that left Ann feeling left out? I’d at least ask the new guy if he played chess before I began plotting to kill him in his sleep. Maybe Loomis could address the elephant in the room and offer a spirited defense of his atheism. One imagines he could make a compelling case considering God wiped out 6 billion people before “mercifully” sparing these three. In short, I wanted the characters to have personalities outside of their symbolic function, but alas, it’s not in the cards. No, it’s all significant looks, unspoken animosity, and attempted conversations that get cut off abruptly. The audience arrives at the contrived (literal) cliffhanger finale long before the film gets there.

Symbolism makes the strongest impression when we don’t realize we’re getting it, when the dimensions reveal themselves only after we absorb the story on a literal level. Z for Zachariah is constantly getting in the way of that initial experience, poking us in the ribs, asking if we get it.

Grade: C+

Comments

[Rahul]

I like that they look dirty and worn and she looks straight out the salon. Cold Mountain flashbacks!