The tragic diary of Zero The Fool
The tragic diary of Zero The Fool
Penelope, her lover, and her fool, invite the director to Ottawa to make a film of their relationship. As the three try to agree on a script the director, the realist, searches for truer expression. At this point, hovering somewhere between the script they each have in mind and the director’s view of their relationship, the movie begins. Soon, the actors find themselves trapped within their movie, both by the director in his demand for truth and their own search for meaning, all brought to life, all being revealed as the core of the film’s dramatic progress. They are also trapped inside the built-in imperatives of filmmaking, its manipulation of actors, its simulations and distortions of reality, all of which the Director wants to reveal as part of the film. The actors begin bravely and hopefully, choosing identities based on characters of the Tarot that most portray them. But as the drama unfolds the players shed the last of their pre-defined roles. The line between acting their planned parts and the unfolding reality of their relationships becomes blurred. Ultimately differentiation is impossible. It is all an act. And it is all too real.
Grand Prize, Ann Arbor Film Festival, 6 first prizes at American University Film Festival Tour.
"... a post-movie movie" amazing portraiture... incredible luminosity" ... "that sense of intensified presence that is genius of the medium" There is more in Zero the Fool than in five other movies, and that's pretty special. (Take One)
"A winner no more than ZERO" ... It is in a sense a postmovie movie... It is difficult to verbalize the amazing portraiture of this film. Markson's camera picks up an incredible luminosity from the faces of his performers and translates that luminosity into images of classic simplicity, yet, also of intense expressiveness. The interplay of the pure and beautiful images and the emotional intensity of the performances generates an energy that for me, at least, is precisely what film is about. The role-playing of the characters within the film, their attempts to relate to one another, to the audience, and to the film itself as it is in the process of coming into being, creates that sense of intensified presence that is genius of the medium. (Michigan Daily)