Peter Greenaway’s film A Zed & Two Noughts (1985)—often simply called Zoo by viewers due to its setting—is primarily set in and around a zoo in an unnamed English city (filmed at the Rotterdam Zoo in the Netherlands). The setting is not just literal but thematically central.
Main settings and symbolism:
- The Zoo: Acts as a surreal, enclosed ecosystem where decay, evolution, and symmetry are observed. It’s where the twin protagonists, both zoologists, become obsessed with time-lapse decomposition and the cycle of life and death.
- Hospital: The story begins when the wives of the twin brothers die in a car crash caused by a swan. The hospital where they grieve also becomes a setting of sterile introspection.
- Vermeer-like interiors: Several scenes are framed to mirror Dutch paintings, especially Vermeer, adding to the film’s obsession with visual symmetry, order, and decay.
- Time-lapse studio: The twins film the decomposition of animals and even fruit and vegetables, turning scientific observation into a kind of art installation.
Greenaway’s “zoo” is less about animals and more about the architecture of death, symmetry, and nature as a system of entropy. The physical zoo becomes a metaphorical stage for philosophical inquiries.
TimeSpace Warps 