Sundance: "Z for Zachariah" Creaks Under The Weight Of Its Allegory
Wednesday, February 4, 2015 at 4:00PM 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...]
