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Z for Zachariah movie 1984 AD vs. 2015 AD versions

Z for Zachariah is a 1974 AD novel by Robert C. O’Brien—which I did not read.

This very succinct commentary is based on having watched the two versions: 1984 AD and 2015 AD.

1984 AD: directed by Anthony Garner, starring Anthony Andrews, Pippa Hinchley, David Daker.

2015 AD: directed by Craig Zobel, starring Margot Robbie, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Chris Pine.

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The premise is post-apocalyptic due to mass radiation.

Both, essentially, have one lone woman living in a radiation free valley.

1984 has her interacting with only one man who runs across her (having happened upon the valley after traveling by foot in a suit that protects against radiation).
2015 has another man eventually coming into the picture.

Both have the first man testing the valley area and finding it radiation free, bathes in a stream with the woman looking on from afar as she is seeking to discern if he is safe to approach or not. Both have him getting radiation poisoning as it turns out that, that particular water was contaminated. 1984 has the woman looking on, nursing him back to, relative, health and only later noting that she knew that there was something wrong with the water, in general terms.

2015 has her revealing herself to him when she sees him in the water and yelling for him to get out as the water in that particular stream is fed from outside of the valley and is thus, polluted. She nurses him back to health.

2015 has a complex romance subplot as the first man, John Loomis and the woman, Ann Burden, begin developing feelings for each other. Yet, when the second man, Caleb, arrives Ann begins to have feelings for him as well. 1984 simply has John suddenly attempting to rape Ann. She runs off and returns at one point to the house they shared. She tells him that she will live elsewhere in the valley but offers to keep helping him with food, etc. Not much later, John shoots her in the leg (it turns out that John had been involved in the inventing of the radiation suit and had murdered the co-inventor). The movie ends with her leaving the valley wearing the suit and John asking her to come back some day.

2015 has some tense moments between John and Caleb. The last we know of Caleb is that he was climbing a rope up a rocky precipice and helped up by John when he slips at the top of the climb. He slips a second time and John and Caleb look each other in the eye. The movie ends with John telling Ann that Caleb has decided to move on, due to obvious tensions between them all—period.

2015 includes another subplot that is definitely not within 1984 (do not know if it is within the book).
Ann is a Christian whose dad was a pastor who had pinpointed the valley as a safe place to survive. His church still stands and Ann goes therein to pray, play the organ, etc. This much may be deduced from 1984 as well but that is where it is left in that version.

When John shows up and they have meals she always prays but he does not and looks very uncomfortable. Eventually, he conceives of building water wheel and suggests tearing down the church for the wood. Ann is very reluctant to do so but eventually agrees. This is symbolic of her compromising her Christian faith—and ethics.
One night, Ann has sex with John and when he is all but passed out from la petite mort, she also has sex with Caleb.

Thus, in the end, she has compromised and may have ended up with a murderer.

This is a very subtle manner whereby to make what may be a Christophobic movie under the guise of a very uneventful and pretty boring so called “sci-fi” movie.


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