Zeroville Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		2.5

Zeroville Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 10, 2021

One of several "films in a film" (to quote a character in this film) that populate Zeroville is Alejandro Jodorowsky's intense and often opaque The Holy Mountain, and in that regard I was instantly reminded of an absolutely fantastic quote by Jodorowsky that I mentioned in our Santa Sangre Blu-ray review . There's an unapologetically visceral combination of delight and umbrage that suffuses Jodorowsky as he comments acerbically about the "movie industry", stating, "I am not an industrialist, I'm an artist." One gets the feeling that James Franco would definitely be a comrade in arms with Jodorowsky, as Franco's career both in front of and perhaps especially behind the camera has not exactly been a model of placating the unwashed masses. In some ways Zeroville and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood might make for a fascinating double feature, if one that would probably annoy if not outright antagonize armchair historians who want the "facts, and only the facts". Both Zeroville and the Tarantino film examine that problematic "film industry", dealing with more or less the same era (Zeroville moves on from 1969 after a while), and with a potent amount of "fictionalization" stuffed into a supposedly semi-realistic accounting of an assumed milieu, including perhaps questionable allusions (in both cases) to the Manson murders.

Zeroville was culled from a novel by Steve Erickson which was met with near unanimous critical acclaim, but which is evidently, somewhat like The Holy Mountain, both intense and opaque. I frankly have not read Erickson's work, though Franco's film version kind of makes me want to, since I'm wondering if some of the deficits and head scratching moments in the film are part and parcel of the source tome, or cropped up due to an adaptive process that wasn't able to "translate" Erickson to the medium of film. Just reading about the book online in doing research in preparation for writing this review disclosed a number of plot points or character issues that are dealt with almost discursively or as throwaways in the film, which leads me to believe that it was perhaps choices made by co-scenarists Paul Felten and Ian Olds which at least contributed to some of Zeroville's more confounding elements.

Vikar (James Franco) is a young man with a dream, or perhaps a nightmare, of getting involved with the film business, and he travels to Los Angeles, where almost magically he is basically instantly employed at Paramount as a set builder, and where he just as conveniently meets longtime studio editor Dotty Langer (Jacki Weaver), a character one assumes is based in part on someone like Dede Allen or Thelma Schoonmaker. Right off the bat Zeroville is kind of on perilous ground in its mixture of fact and fiction, both in terms of Vikar finding absolutely no obstacles whatsoever in terms of making an entré into the (sorry Alejandro) film industry, but also with regard to elements like the plot point of Dotty being the editor on Love Story (Robert C. Jones fulfilled that assignment in real life). Vikar also ingratiates himself with a director known as Viking Man (Seth Rogan) and a studio executive named Rondell (Will Ferrell), both kind of unlikely situations for a new on the job set builder, thereby pushing this story into fairy tale territory, albeit most definitely of the Grimm Brothers rather than the Mother Goose variety.

Vikar has a shaved head and on the back of his skull he has had a tattoo emblazoned of Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor in A Place in the Sun, and there are fitful attempts to work that film repeatedly into this one, especially with regard to Vikar's nascent romance with actress Soledad Paladin (Megan Fox). Vikar's education in film is detailed (he was in a seminary for years and so hasn't seen many classics), but a potentially intriguing subplot has Soledad turning up for nanoseconds in all sorts of classics, including The Passion of Joan of Arc, which understandably leads Vikar on a quest to figure out what's going on. Unfortunately, this aspect is never fully developed, or at least not developed soon enough, leaving the vast majority of Zeroville to meander, kind of like Vikar wandering around the backlot.

Note: My colleague Brian Orndorf was even less impressed with Zeroville than I was. You can read Brian's thoughts here.

Zeroville Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Zeroville is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of MVD Visual with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.40:1. The closing credits offer the "shot on Red" logo, but I haven't been able to find any authoritative data on the resolution of the DI (which I suspect was 2K). Franco and director of photography Bruce Thierry Cheung employ all sorts of stylistic quirks throughout the film, some of which, like some intentionally hellish red lighting regimens, may deflate fine detail levels a bit, though generally speaking this presentation offers superior clarity and detail. The brightly lit outdoor Los Angeles environments understandably offer the most breathing room for the palette to really pop, and fine detail in some of these sequences is often quite impressive. Some of the interior scenes that have either been lit or graded to a variety of sometimes odd hues don't offer the same levels of detail, but are still generally great looking. There are some black and white interstitials utilized, both in terms of some of the clips from other films, but also for the "metaphysical" (?) denouement.

Zeroville Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Zeroville features DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and LPCM 2.0 audio options. Both tracks offer secure fidelity, but the glut of both source cues and snippets from classic soundtracks probably have at least a bit more depth and spaciousness in the surround version, even if some of the soundtrack cues were initially in mono. Outdoor scenes and a couple of big "group" sequences feature good immersive moments, with noticeable engagement of the side and rear channels. Dialogue and a couple of odd "musical" moments are delivered cleanly and clearly. Optional English subtitles are available.

Zeroville Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailers includes Zeroville Trailer 1 (HD; 2:27) and Zeroville Trailer 2 (SD: 3:00), along with trailers for other releases by MVD Visual.

Zeroville Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The late, great Leonard Cohen famously waxed poetic in "Hallelujah" about a so-called "hidden chord", and one can feel Franco struggling mightily to provide clues to a similarly mystical "hidden movie" throughout Zeroville, but there are so many detours this film takes that Zeroville itself ends up feeling hidden from itself. The cast is interesting, but the hallucinogenic combo platter of "fact" and fiction never comes close to gelling. Technical merits are solid for those who are considering a purchase.