Reception
They called us and were excited about the imagery, the poetry, the experimentation with the documentary form then, strangely, suddenly, in 2005, it becomes the talk of society. How do we go from something being utterly hidden from view, and then suddenly we're consumed with it and so upset by it we need to pass a law?
Charles MudedeSundance judges called it a "humanizing look at the life and bizarre death of a seemingly normal Seattle family man who met his untimely end after an unusual encounter with a horse".
The Seattle Times called it "A tough sell that gets respect at Sundance", also noting the local economic effect of landmark films which put a location "on the map". OC Weekly film says, "Zoo achieves the seemingly impossible: It tells the luridly reported tale of a Pacific Northwest engineer for Boeing's fatal sexual encounter with a horse in a way that’s haunting rather than shocking and tender beyond reason." Similar views were expressed by the Los Angeles Times ("remarkably, an elegant, eerily lyrical film has resulted") and the Toronto Star, "gorgeously artful ... one of the most beautifully restrained, formally distinctive and mysterious films of the entire festival".
Other reviewers criticized the film for breaching "the last taboo", or for sinking to new depths: "More compelling than the depths of man's degeneracy is our cultural rationalization of 'art,' whereby pushing the envelope is confused with genius and scuttling the last taboo is seen as an expression of sophistication."
Read more about this topic: Zoo (film)
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
“To aim to convert a man by miracles is a profanation of the soul. A true conversion, a true Christ, is now, as always, to be made by the reception of beautiful sentiments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)