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Zenith (film)

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Zenith
Promotional poster
Directed byVladan Nikolic
Screenplay byVladan Nikolic
Story byVladan Nikolic
Produced by
Starring
CinematographyVladimir Subotic
Edited byMilica Zec
Music byLuigi Colarullo
Release date
  • October 1, 2010 (2010-10-01)
Running time
93 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish

Zenith - A Film by Anonymous is a 2010 American psychological thriller about two men attempting to solve the same conspiracy theory. The title refers to a grand 'Zenith Conspiracy' formed by the film's protagonist, Ed Crowley. The film also utilizes an alternate reality game and transmedia storytelling to augment its narrative.[1][2]

Zenith premiered at The IFC Center in New York City on October 1, 2010, and had an extended run in January 2011 at the Kraine Theatre with its distribution company, Cinema Purgatorio.[3] All three parts have been made available as a free-to-share download at the BitTorrent powered distribution site VODO.

Plot

In the post-apocalyptic year 2044, the population has been genetically altered to live in a constant state of happiness, but without sorrow, happiness dissipates, leaving only a feeling of never-ending paresthesia. Only pain can make people feel alive.

Jack (Peter Scanavino), a young man and former neurosurgeon, is a peddler of substances that induce pain. A stranger knocks on Jack’s door and hands him a single video tape that Jack’s long lost father, Ed Alexander Crowley (Jason Robards III), left behind. It is the first in a series of 10 tapes in which Ed has documented his life and his pursuit of what he calls the “Grand Conspiracy,” a conspiracy that quite possibly could be the answer to what happened to Jack’s world.

Inspired by his father’s tape, Jack sets out on his own investigation. But in order to solve the whole puzzle, he must locate the remaining nine tapes. Jack begins to track down four more tapes, but the larger answer still eludes him.

Jack meets the provocative Lisa (Ana Asensio) in a strip club, and is struck by the fact that she is just as conflicted and lonely as he is. Through her, Jack encounters the possibility of real love. As Jack finds the remaining tapes, the lines between his interior and exterior world blur, leading him to question reality itself. Lisa and Jack decide to abandon the search for the tapes and leave the city.

Jack locates Ed’s last tape, and is suddenly faced with the same choice his father had to make forty years ago: to surrender his soul, or to remain true to himself, no matter the consequences. Jack's reality becomes the same reality as the final tape.

The final scene reveals Jack as an institutionalized patient (named Ed Crowley) with both a brain tumour and epilepsy taking part in a clinical research trial in 2012. The movie ends with him scribbling notes about Zenith while being monitored by a camera in his cell. He wonders if this isn't another part of the conspiracy.

Cast

Production

Zenith was written and directed by Vladan Nikolic, and filmed digitally using the Red One camera.[4]

Alternate reality game

On August 31, 2010, Above Top Secret posted a forum thread[5] offering a $500 reward for the first individual to correctly identify the purpose behind the website for the fictitious company "Wadjet Industries."[6][7] Through a maze of websites, users quickly discovered that Wadjet Industries was related to a new film by director Vladan Nikolic, and that the goal of the alternate reality game was to find online video clips of Ed Crowley's tapes, edit them together, and upload them via YouTube to the film's promotional website, stopzenith.com.[8][9]

BitTorrent promotion

On March 16, 2011, BitTorrent Inc. promoted an open licensed version (CC by-nc-nd) of the first section of the film[10] for two weeks with Vodo.net[11] and other torrent-based distribution partners. Users downloading BitTorrent client software are encouraged to download and share the first of three parts of the film during the software installation. On May 4, 2011, Part Two of the film was made available on Vodo.[12]

Reception

Upon the film's limited release in theaters, reviews ranged from positive to mixed. In the Village Voice, Michael Atkinson noted, "The waltz between grizzled, realistic acting (particularly from David Thornton as a spooky, upbeat post-surgery millionaire) and evocative compositions entrances, but Zenith is actually one of those films for which poverty dictates that its story be told largely through narration—a brooding science-fiction trip enjoyed largely as a monologue."[13]

Jeannette Catsoulis in The New York Times commented, this "bewildering collision of noir narration and purple paranoia may be long on atmosphere but is woefully short on sense."[14]

Noel Murray of the AV Club gave the 90-minute film a C+, while calling it "an audacious, impressive feat of imagination, turning a few sets and characters into a generation-spanning look at a society where benevolence and malevolence are so finely interwoven that it’s hard to know what to fight against." Murray found that, in 90-minute film form, it "doesn’t fully work"; both the beginning and end of the film were "strong", but in between, the film seemed padded with "cheesy-looking sex and fight scenes, and with a doubling-back narrative structure" that was confusing, and looked like an "attempt to save money by reusing footage."[15]

Brett Michel in the Boston Herald gave the film a "B", and remarked, "persistent voiceover narration, a device that helps smooth over a lack of scene transitions — [is] one area that exposes the film’s budgetary limitations. Still, the use of dilapidated Brooklyn and Queens locations, creatively photographed by Vladimir Subotic, goes a ways toward selling a future not too far removed from ones en-visioned by Philip K. Dick or J.G. Ballard."[16]

Loren Smith of the Boston Globe found the film "pretty good", and noted it "boasts terrific photography by Vladimir Subotic and offers a few genuine surprises. Director Nikolic [...] gets solid performances from all the actors and creates an atmosphere of mounting paranoia that’s grim and chilling," but, "the shoestring budget is often obvious, with one too many strobe-light sequences, and it is dispiriting that even a movie set in 2044 has a gold-hearted hooker as the hero’s object of desire."[17]

References

  1. ^ Official Zenith Press Notes. zeniththefilm.com.
  2. ^ Tabitha (September 21, 2010). "Zenith and its "transmedia" approach to storytelling could very well become an Internet phenomenon". SoundsOnSight.org.
  3. ^ "Zenith – Cinema Purgatorio". Cinemapurgatorio.com. Retrieved 2011-05-04.
  4. ^ Vodo. IMDB.
  5. ^ "September, 2010 ATS Game Rules and Solutions". AboveTopSecret.com. August 31, 2010.
  6. ^ Wadjet Industries website
  7. ^ AboveTopSecret.com. "September, 2010 ATS Game Rules and Solutions, page 1". Abovetopsecret.com. Retrieved 2011-05-04.
  8. ^ Crakeur. "2010 Game Discussion, page 1". Abovetopsecret.com. Retrieved 2011-05-04.
  9. ^ "What will it take to stop 'Zenith'? This film may have the answers". TwitchFilm.net. September 2010.
  10. ^ "BitTorrent Ecosystem: Zenith Part One Takes the Spotlight (...)". BitTorrent Blog. Bittorrent.com. March 16, 2011.
  11. ^ "Zenith (2011) — by Anonymous". VODO. Retrieved 2011-05-04.
  12. ^ "Zenith (2011) - a film by anonymous". May 4, 2011. Archived from the original on 2011-05-04.
  13. ^ Atkinson, Michael (September 29, 2010). "Sci-Fi? Zenith Imagines a Future When No One is Happy in Brooklyn or Queens". Village Voice.
  14. ^ Catsoulis, Jeannette (January 18, 2011). "His Dad Left a Conspiracy; You're Invited to the Hunt". New York Times.
  15. ^ Murray, Noel (January 20, 2011). "Zenith (review)". AV Club.
  16. ^ Michel, Brett (January 28, 2011). "'Zenith' at top of its game". Boston Herald.
  17. ^ King, Loren (January 28, 2011). "A futuristic thriller tied to a web of conspiracy". Boston Globe.
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