Major Spoilers ahead, so don't read if you haven't watched the film.
First off, Zenith is not only a film, it's an experience, an experiment in storytelling through a movie and a variety of story extensions and background stories and histories from the real world. The many websites associated with the project don't exist anymore but you can still find traces online, and the film can also stand on its own. So, what is the film actually about? A lot of people, including most critics, have written about its themes, referencing Sci-Fi Dystopia. That is certainly true. To fully understand Zenith's ideas, you should at least have read Orwell, Huxley, Ballard and Gibson, and Moebius' graphic novels. The perversion of language ("what you can't express in language doesn't exist in human minds"), the illusion of "happiness" through numbness induced by pharma, mass entertainment and social media distractions are all systems of control of the individual by those in power. In our times, it's global and all-pervasive. To search for the "truth" and the people behind the curtain is dangerous, and those who still remember "the words that have been forgotten" better play dumb, like Jack. The premise is actually plain to see - the experiment opens the film and is repeated. The experiment is about obedience to authority. But it's also about deception and our willingness to abandon free will and personal responsibility. If we agree to believe the deception, we agree to play the game, blindly turning up the levers when the experiment supervisors tell us to do so. Even if we discover the deception, we can choose not to do anything about it (Jack's father). But if we do something, it will have consequences (Jack).
To read the ending as "Oh, he's just sick" is leaving us with the option to walk away, assured that this is not the reality we live in, it's just Jack's problem. It's not society that's sick, it's Jack. But he is not sick, he is being brainwashed. The TV ad in the hospital is clear, as is the conversation with the "doctor," and the moment when Lisa gets wheeled by, her head shaved, with no expression on her face, numb. The experiment is complete, and we, the viewers are also participants. How far do we push the levers? What do we believe? What is real, and what is a manufactured reality that we can buy into to feel better about ourselves? There are even more layers in the film of course - references to social roles of men and women ("The whore and the mother"), the quest of the powerful to live forever and ensure their dominance (Berger), and even esoteric ones (Ed Crowley/Aleister Crowley). Like in any good conspiracy theory, dead ends and wrong leads are also there to avoid oversimplification. Zenith is billed as a "futuristic" film but it's obviously about our present reality, amplified to extremes. "The future will be grim and hopeless" after the Zenith is passed, it is said, but also "the future is up to you," as Jack writes in the end. Maybe the future hasn't been written after all, if we find tape eleven.
First off, Zenith is not only a film, it's an experience, an experiment in storytelling through a movie and a variety of story extensions and background stories and histories from the real world. The many websites associated with the project don't exist anymore but you can still find traces online, and the film can also stand on its own. So, what is the film actually about? A lot of people, including most critics, have written about its themes, referencing Sci-Fi Dystopia. That is certainly true. To fully understand Zenith's ideas, you should at least have read Orwell, Huxley, Ballard and Gibson, and Moebius' graphic novels. The perversion of language ("what you can't express in language doesn't exist in human minds"), the illusion of "happiness" through numbness induced by pharma, mass entertainment and social media distractions are all systems of control of the individual by those in power. In our times, it's global and all-pervasive. To search for the "truth" and the people behind the curtain is dangerous, and those who still remember "the words that have been forgotten" better play dumb, like Jack. The premise is actually plain to see - the experiment opens the film and is repeated. The experiment is about obedience to authority. But it's also about deception and our willingness to abandon free will and personal responsibility. If we agree to believe the deception, we agree to play the game, blindly turning up the levers when the experiment supervisors tell us to do so. Even if we discover the deception, we can choose not to do anything about it (Jack's father). But if we do something, it will have consequences (Jack).
To read the ending as "Oh, he's just sick" is leaving us with the option to walk away, assured that this is not the reality we live in, it's just Jack's problem. It's not society that's sick, it's Jack. But he is not sick, he is being brainwashed. The TV ad in the hospital is clear, as is the conversation with the "doctor," and the moment when Lisa gets wheeled by, her head shaved, with no expression on her face, numb. The experiment is complete, and we, the viewers are also participants. How far do we push the levers? What do we believe? What is real, and what is a manufactured reality that we can buy into to feel better about ourselves? There are even more layers in the film of course - references to social roles of men and women ("The whore and the mother"), the quest of the powerful to live forever and ensure their dominance (Berger), and even esoteric ones (Ed Crowley/Aleister Crowley). Like in any good conspiracy theory, dead ends and wrong leads are also there to avoid oversimplification. Zenith is billed as a "futuristic" film but it's obviously about our present reality, amplified to extremes. "The future will be grim and hopeless" after the Zenith is passed, it is said, but also "the future is up to you," as Jack writes in the end. Maybe the future hasn't been written after all, if we find tape eleven.