Zorns Lemma (1970) User Reviews

How to take 50 minutes to peel a clementine

[cwhaskell · 6/10 · 16 May 2013]

I am not a fan of avant garde cinema. I like it in theory but have a very difficult time actually watching it and staying engaged. This was actually pretty different from other experimental art films I have seen, and really connected with me and made it to where I had to see how the individual stories resolved. I would say it's worth a watch if you're interested in trying out experimental films.

Just know going in that it will require a certain degree of patience. That's not a bad thing, of course, just something to be aware of. One of the ways the filmmaker captures the audiences attention is by lulling you in to a certain rhythm and then disrupting it on his time instead of your own. Very tricky, but effective, as I was never fully comfortable watching this ... in a good way.

strange, seriously strange, beautiful, seriously beautiful

[jefu · 10/10 · 14 May 2002]

I saw this in (I think) 1972 - several times (in a class, in an experimental film showing, and once more in conjunction with the class). I was originally interested because of the name "Zorn's Lemma" - which turns out to be equivalent to the mathematical "Axiom of Choice" - and as a math major the axiom of choice fascinated me (still does).

I don't know what I expected, but it wasn't what I saw - and yet what I saw was somehow compelling, beautiful and unforgettable.

Don't expect a plot (in the usual sense anyway), spectacular photography, or instant gratification. And don't give up on it too soon.

Do expect a beautiful, challenging, contemplative hour of film on the nature of film, of reading and writing, and of structure.

I wish I could find a copy of it now.

Frampton's Masterpiece of Structuralist Filmmaking

[Tornado_Sam · 22 July 2019]

Hollis Frampton's "Zorns Lemma" is frequently and arguably considered to be the experimental filmmaker's masterpiece in structuralism, and probably his most important contribution to filmmaking in general. Visually speaking, it is a complex work of cinema that doubtless took much work to produce, in the repetitive cycle it goes through; with the rhythm of the alphabet as it is gone through again and again, it seeks to create a pattern with the audience that is mentally effective. While a full hour of imagery put in a loop might sound painfully dull, eventually and gradually the viewer learns to accept the imagery and be brought into a state of meditation.

After a poetry reading at the opening of the movie, "Zorns Lemma" devotes itself almost entirely to showing a progressive loop of imagery, beginning with street signs forming a visual alphabet which are slowly replaced by other images, including construction workers, a talking woman, waves on a seashore, a child on a swing and most memorably the hands peeling the clementine. The changes are brought about slowly and gradually, and just when your mind begins to wander Frampton brings it back by replacing another letter with a new image. As the film progresses, the various actions shown are brought to a close: the clementine is finished, the construction workers end their job, etc. Finally, a ten-minute stationary shot is held at the end, whilst the voices of women recite Grosseteste's "On Light".

If you view this film, I recommend you find a good copy. The copies on YouTube have terrible resolution and I would have gotten even more out of the movie had it been high quality. As a piece of structuralist filmmaking it is a masterpiece, and it is also an important lesson to most conventional movie-goers who walk into the cinemas always expecting gripping action and plot. For an hour, "Zorns Lemma" is, as another reviewer has said, a compelling work that always has you in excited anticipation of what is to change next in the loop of imagery, while at the same time bringing you to accept and understand the plot-less structure and lapse your mind into a state of meditation. It is a boring and painful work to sit through only for those who refuse to let it capture them.

Baby Einstein documental.

[chemala1972 · 2/10 · 1 September 2020]

It is like Baby Einstein for adults. Snob people love it. For illiteracy could be helpful. Two stars for the laugh attack at the fith minute, when you realize that somebody is kidding you.

Amazing

[Afracious · 10/10 · 1 March 2004]

This is an amazing experimental film from American avant-garde filmmaker Hollis Frampton. It begins with a dark screen and a woman narrating from The Bay State Primer, an early American grammar textbook that teaches the letters of the alphabet by using them in sentences derived from the Bible, then the rest of the film is mostly silent. It presents us with a recurring structure that perpetually moves throughout a 24-letter alphabet via various signs in New York with words that propel the film along. Gradually other images are added to the loop, some of them themselves slowly developing as we arrive at them the next time around. It concludes with a man, woman and dog crossing a snowy field, while several narrators each narrate one word at a time read from an 11th century treatise, "On Light, or the Ingression of Forms", by Robert Grosseteste. Ambiguous, metaphorical and fascinating. A veritable masterpiece of structural filmmaking. 

The film is also a major influence on Peter Greenaway - it is one of the films he most admires.

In one hour learn the alphabet and separate your senses.

[pthomann · 10/10 · 22 September 2001]

Vision is separated from hearing and then put back together.

Listen for Grosetesta's (spelling?) Treatis on Light..

It will make you whole again. Not to worry it's ONLY an hour. Highly recommended.