Peter Greenaway

[thirtyframesasecond]

The Guardian ran a piece yesterday about how a new domestic violence ad by Joe Wright/Keira Knightley unwittingly references The Baby of Macon. I wasn't even aware of the film until then but it sounds pretty hard going given the shocking plot development. Is it worth watching? I'd be approaching this with no experience of Greenaway except "The Cook..."

[Fiery Angel]

"The Cook" is definitely enough experience for "Macon."

[tojoed]

...The Baby of Macon. I wasn't even aware of the film until then but it sounds pretty hard going given the shocking plot development. Is it worth watching? I'd be approaching this with no experience of Greenaway except "The Cook..."

It depends. If you liked "The Cook", you'll probably like, or be able to tolerate, "The Baby of Macon". If you didn't, you'll probably hate it.

[Gropius]

The Guardian ran a piece yesterday about how a new domestic violence ad by Joe Wright/Keira Knightley unwittingly references The Baby of Macon.

That article continues in the venerable British news media tradition of wagging the moral finger at Greenaway for his supposed lack of 'humanity'. To call him a misogynist is to miss the point entirely. Yes, The Baby of Mâcon depicts (off-screen) the horrific abuse of a woman in a 'cruelly' detached style, but then Greenaway is drawing on the misanthropic moral universe of 17th century drama, the motto of which might be, to borrow from Herzog, 'every man for himself and God against all' (a social ideology not so far removed from that of late 20th C. 'market democracy', an irony clearly present in the film).

Anyway, personally, I think Mâcon is one of the great films of the 90s, and one of the highlights of Greenaway's career.

[kaujot]

With no current DVD release (that my limited searching found, anyway).

[Tommaso]

There was an R4 release of "Macon" a few years ago. But even if you can track it down somewhere, don't even touch with a bargepole. It looks worse than a second generation VHS rip; actually the worst dvd I ever encountered of a relatively new film.

As to "Macon", the problem with the film is neither its supposed misogyny (it isn't misogynistic) nor the violence itself, which isn't as shocking as that in "Cook", not to speak of films like Jodo's "El Topo", for instance. But Greenaway's extreme stylisation and ritualisation - after all the film is based on the form of the medieval mystery plays - for the first time in his oeuvre begins to work against the film and the narrative itself. There is little dramatic momentum in the film, and while I admire the intellectual conceits and the maginificent visuals, I can't help finding it a little bit...ahm.. boring in the long run. Just a little bit. On the other hand, I'm surprised that the film could still be taken so much at face value today as by the writer of that Guardian article. The film is far too self-reflexive to elicit a response like that.

[Foam]

I have only seen The Draughtsman's Contract. I very much liked but didn't love it. How is this similar to/different from the rest of his oeuvre?

[Tommaso]

It's similar to the rest of his work in using games, numbers, series etc. for structuring the narrative and also in constantly reflecting about what we see and whether what we see is 'real' or rather only one way of seeing things. There's also already an emphasis on painting, in this case the central 'Allegory on Newton' from which Neville (mis-)construes what is going on in the garden. All these topics attain much more depth, but also a certain mannerist quality in later films.
"The Draughtsman's Contract" is certainly one of Greenaway's most accessible and funny films, an ideal place to start with the works of PG, even though Michael Powell famously found it much too talkative. And there's certainly less emphasis on dialogue in the later films.

[Tribe]

An update on Fleshbot of all things (the link is Not Safe For Work):

Following in the tradition of "Nine Songs" and "Shortbus," Peter Greenaway—director of "The Pillow Book" and "The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, & Her Lover"—is rumored to be casting for a very sexy movie.

Our tipster reports:

Dutch actresses are auditioning for [Greenaway] and being asked two questions: 1) "Would you be willing to have unsimulated intercourse on screen?" 2) "Would you be willing to appear in a shot in which semen leaks out of your vagina?"

Unsimulated sex and creampies? From the director of "The Pillow Book"? Do we have to tell you how excited we are for this? We just hope it makes its way to American theaters—there's nothing quite like eating movie popcorn while watching semen leaking out of a vagina.

[Robotron]

Some more video resources: Two short films by Greenaway: The Coastline and Sandra Rhodes.

[thirtyframesasecond]

I saw The Baby of Macon over Easter. I can see Pulver's point. Whether Wright was aware of the film or not, the advert certainly seems to reference the most contentious scene of the film, although maybe it's not that original a device. Who knows? As for the film itself, it's easier to admire than to enjoy - wonderful sets, elaborate use of the camera that defies the theatrical setting. It's a wonderfully stylised film with an intriguing form, but I'm not so bothered about any religious satire involved - not sure it adds up to much. It's certainly provocative, which is probably the main intention of the film.

The Guardian ran a piece yesterday about how a new domestic violence ad by Joe Wright/Keira Knightley unwittingly references The Baby of Macon. I wasn't even aware of the film until then but it sounds pretty hard going given the shocking plot development. Is it worth watching? I'd be approaching this with no experience of Greenaway except "The Cook..."

[Tribe]

The Baby of Macon is a strange bird in Greenaway's mid-career, I think. It followed on the heels of a string of brilliant movies (Prospero's Books, The Cook The Thief and Drowning By numbers...not in any particular order) and while it does indeed continue with the pageantry and staging exhibited in Prosper and The Cook...it sort of stalls inasmuch as it has at least two or three stretches of intense tedium.

I'm not knocking it because the whole of Baby of Macon still makes for an interesting viewing experience. I think the ideas of viewer participation, voyeurism and interplay between reality and fictional staging are portrayed in a compelling way.

Greenaway has never reached the heights of his masterpieces since (his last film I saw was 8 1/2 Women) and in that respect Baby of Macon is something of a transitional work.

[Tribe]

A 15 September DVD release date for Peter Greenaway's Nightwatching.

Anyone know anything about Nightwatching? Liked, didn't like?

[FerdinandGriffon]

Anyone know anything about Nightwatching? Liked, didn't like?

I loved it, but not for the usual reasons that I love Greenaway. I loved it because it was so emotionally effecting, strange as this may seem. I cried, and not out of disgust, or laughter, or anything like that. I cried because it was sad.

Of course it's still a Greenaway film. It has all of his trademarks; painterly compositions, an obsession with bodily functions, references to European art history, ludicrously overcomplicated intrigues, Nyman-esque music, food and sex and death and conspiracy. But in Rembrandt (played brilliantly by Martin Freeman), Greenaway seems to have, for the first time in his career, created a fully developed, three-dimensional character that he cares about. For the first time, the terrors that he visits his characters with seem to hurt him too.

I think it's something entirely new for Greenaway, and at the same time a magnificent return to form. The second newest of his that I've seen was 8 1/2 Women, which started off well but seemed to completely lose the trail by the end.

[Gropius]

Anyone know anything about Nightwatching? Liked, didn't like?

There was a thread on it here. Not bad, but not up to the level of his best work: it might as well be called The Draughtsman's Contract Redux, given the retread of that film's plot.

[Tribe]

In Venice, Peter Greenaway Takes Veronese’s Figures Out to Play

June 22, 2009
In Venice, Peter Greenaway Takes Veronese’s Figures Out to Play
By ROBERTA SMITH

VENICE — You can love it or hate it. You can dismiss it as mediocre art, Disneyfied kitsch or a flamboyant denigration of site-specific video installation.

If you’re in town for the Venice Biennale, don’t miss the marriage of High Renaissance painting and advanced technology that is “The Wedding at Cana,” by the British filmmaker Peter Greenaway. If nothing else, it is possibly the best unmanned art history lecture you’ll ever experience.

Subtitled “A Vision by Peter Greenaway,” this 50-minute digital extravaganza of light, sound, theatrical illusion and formal dissection is being projected onto and around a full-scale replica of “The Wedding at Cana,” Paolo Veronese’s immense and revered landmark of Western painting.

The replica is a wonder of digital reproduction itself. It covers the great rear wall of the Benedictine refectory on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, exactly where the original hung from 1562, when Veronese finished it, until 1797. That’s when Napoleon had it taken down, cut up and carted back to Paris as war booty. It was sent to the Louvre, where its mastery of light and color entranced French painters and influenced the development of Impressionism.

Like the original, the clone measures nearly 24 feet by 33 feet; it appears to include even the seams of Napoleon’s segmentation. It was painstakingly created pixel by pixel and installed in the restored refectory — a Palladian design — on Sept. 11, 2007, 210 years to the day after its removal. It couldn’t have been better timed for Mr. Greenaway.

“The Wedding at Cana” is the third in Mr. Greenaway’s series “Nine Classical Painting Revisited,” which is being produced by Change Performing Arts, with Franco Laera as curator. The first visit, in 2006, focused on Rembrandt’s “Night Watch” in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. The second, last year, involved a full-scale replica of Leonardo’s “Last Supper” at Santa Maria della Grazie in Milan (after a one-night projection on the actual fresco that raised art historians’ hackles).

Somehow I missed news of this ambitious project. In Venice for the biennale, and hearing that the Greenaway was worth seeing, I went not knowing what to expect, sat down with other visitors on the refectory’s cool marble floor, leaned back, looked up and, as the piece began, felt my jaw drop.

Palladio’s grand space came alive with images, music, words and animated diagrams and special effects that proceeded to parse from every possible angle the Veronese’s pictorial composition, social structure and drama, which is ostensibly about Jesus’ first miracle, the turning of water into wine, but is really about the lifestyles of the rich and aristocratic of 16th-century Venice. No part of the Veronese image actually moves, but the piece never rests. Close-ups of the faces in the painting, appearing on the side walls between Palladio’s great corniced windows, alternate with apparitional red diagrams of portions of the composition, seen as if from above. There are also subtitles for the whispered conversations that Mr. Greenaway has written for the 126 wedding guests, servants, onlookers and wedding crashers depicted by Veronese.

The conversations, which are signaled by red lines snaking through the crowd on the cloned image, are mostly banal and hokey: Renaissance snark covering real estate, fashion, traffic, the costs of feeding so many people, this new thing called the fork and the strange miracle worker. Jesus has shown up with his mother rather than a wife, and six followers who are fishermen, and positioned himself in the exact center of the event, which all causes quite a bit of sniffing among the other guests. But they like the post-miracle wine: “No cloudiness.” “It’s certainly got body.” “Tastes like a south-facing mountain grape.”

On the veranda above the feast the servants worry about the rising number of guests (800, not 500), the whereabouts of co-workers, the disposition of the new china and the dwindling supplies; they provide perhaps the most convincing sense of immediacy and material culture. The impact of the drama is amplified with some raging fire and a thundering downpour that lasts a tad too long, alluding to other biblical events.

But it is the formal and spatial parsing of the image, its figures, hefty architectural setting and deep vista that is most enthralling. Often familiar art historical ploys are used, but it is still amazing to see so many of them put through their paces so quickly and effortlessly and at actual scale.

In one sequence the figures are numbered and Jesus’ centrality is confirmed with a series of radiating red lines. In another, color drains from the image and the work’s grand spatial recession is measured in white lines on grisaille. There is a shift to stark white on black and the image rotates, so that we are once more above it. Different figure groups are highlighted: you see, for example, that the arrangement of Jesus and his party presages the Last Supper.

Different reactions to the miracle — skepticism, fear, devotion — are singled out. Details are brought forward, like the two men craning out from the upper reaches of the columned edifice who have, for eternity, their own overhead view. Or the meat carver whose knife is positioned directly over Jesus’ head.

To a certain extent all the digital manipulation works its own temporary miracles. Even the inane conversation begins to resemble things that might have floated through Veronese’s mind as he determined his figures’ attire, body language and facial expression. And instead of the usual art-history-lecture spoon-feeding of information, you have the illusion of seeing and thinking for yourself with heightened powers. The next stop should be the Louvre and the real thing.

Mr. Greenaway’s plans or hopes for the future include Picasso’s “Guernica,” Seurat’s “Grande Jatte,” works by Pollock and Monet, Velázquez’s “Meninas” and maybe even Michelangelo’s “Last Judgment.” Stay tuned.

“The Wedding at Cana” runs until early August, then again from late August through the second week of September; Palladian Refectory, San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice; changeperformingarts.it

[Fiery Angel]

Love that pic of Greenaway in the Times article....

[Tommaso]

Nice pic. He looks a bit like a sad walrus.

The Venice installation will almost certainly be great, if the "Last Supper" is anything to go by. I had the chance to see it last year in Milan, though not the one-off event at Santa Maria della Grazie, but the later re-installation in the big museum that is next to the dome. A quite entrancing show of music, sounds and especially light which made you aware of a lot of formal details and symbolisms in the painting that would normally go unnoticed by most people who are not art historians. I wonder whether PG has made a film recording of these shows (which I suppose could rather easily be done, by just using one or two static cameras); they would certainly make for a nice dvd edition.

[Fiery Angel]

Coming to Film Forum in NYC this fall:

OCTOBER 21 – NOVEMBER 3
REMBRANDT’S J’ACCUSE
Directed by Peter Greenaway
THE NETHERLANDS 2008 86 MINS IN ENGLISH
Controversial British filmmaker Peter Greenaway never fails to astound, confound, titillate and provoke. Recently, he has turned his attention to reinterpreting great works of art. Roberta Smith wrote in The New York Times: “If you’re in town for the Venice Biennale, don’t miss (Greenaway’s) marriage of High Renaissance painting and advanced technology that is ‘The Wedding at Cana’…possibly the best unmanned art history lecture you’ll ever experience.” Equally inventive is his REMBRANDT’S J’ACCUSE, a first-person analysis of ‘The Night Watch,’ the 1642 masterpiece on view in Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum. Greenaway claims that the artist laid out dozens of clues regarding a murder -- and for this indiscretion was forced into bankruptcy. Secret alliances, homosexual relationships, phallic symbolism, a transvestite dwarf, illegitimate children, and a Hitchcockian cameo by Rembrandt himself, all come into play. Greenaway complements his revisionist art history with witty dramatic recreations of these conspiracy theories that reference Rembrandt’s own aesthetic in their elegant framing and lighting.

[mteller]

Coming to Film Forum in NYC this fall:

OCTOBER 21 – NOVEMBER 3
REMBRANDT’S J’ACCUSE
Directed by Peter Greenaway
THE NETHERLANDS 2008 86 MINS IN ENGLISH
Controversial British filmmaker Peter Greenaway never fails to astound, confound, titillate and provoke. Recently, he has turned his attention to reinterpreting great works of art. Roberta Smith wrote in The New York Times: “If you’re in town for the Venice Biennale, don’t miss (Greenaway’s) marriage of High Renaissance painting and advanced technology that is ‘The Wedding at Cana’…possibly the best unmanned art history lecture you’ll ever experience.” Equally inventive is his REMBRANDT’S J’ACCUSE, a first-person analysis of ‘The Night Watch,’ the 1642 masterpiece on view in Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum. Greenaway claims that the artist laid out dozens of clues regarding a murder -- and for this indiscretion was forced into bankruptcy. Secret alliances, homosexual relationships, phallic symbolism, a transvestite dwarf, illegitimate children, and a Hitchcockian cameo by Rembrandt himself, all come into play. Greenaway complements his revisionist art history with witty dramatic recreations of these conspiracy theories that reference Rembrandt’s own aesthetic in their elegant framing and lighting.

Sounds an awful lot like The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting.

[zedz]

Sounds an awful lot like The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting.

Greenaway's been remaking that film for years: Ruiz could have retired on the royalties in the early 90s if he'd had the right lawyer.

[Tribe]

La Manohla on Rembrandt's J'Accuse:

October 21, 2009

The Man Who Watched the Watchers
By MANOHLA DARGIS
Published: October 21, 2009

“One must always apologize for talking about painting,” the French poet Paul Valéry wrote. To which, I suspect, the British filmmaker Peter Greenaway would say, “Nonsense.” In “Rembrandt’s J’Accuse,” his generally absorbing if sometimes fog-inducing feature-length documentary investigation into the mysteries of the Rembrandt painting “The Night Watch,” Mr. Greenaway talks and talks and talks as the image of his head pops on and off the screen in a box, much as Jambi the Genie’s did on “Pee-wee’s Playhouse.”

The movie is an addendum to “Nightwatching,” Mr. Greenaway’s 2007 fictional feature about the painting that was part of a larger project of the same title that he created for the yearlong 2006 celebration of Rembrandt’s 400th birthday in the Netherlands. That project included an opera and a “re-presentation” of the painting. Mr. Greenaway was also the author of a handsome accompanying museum catalog. The “Nightwatching” project was, in turn, the first in an ambitious series Mr. Greenaway has undertaken titled “Nine Classical Paintings Revisited” that has, to date, included inquiries into Leonardo’s “Last Supper” and, as part of this year’s Venice Biennale, Paolo Veronese’s “Wedding at Cana.”

Mr. Greenaway has described the “Nightwatching” installation as “a combination of art and technology designed for an attentive audience that will be intrigued by a world of light and moving images and the single frozen moment.” That pretty much sums up “Rembrandt’s J’Accuse” and, of course, most of cinema. Certainly Mr. Greenaway’s movie will work for, or perhaps on, only the attentive. His filmmaking style, with its accretions of images and text (and words words words), requires focus. In this case some casual knowledge of Dutch and European history probably also helps, as does a level of tolerance for Mr. Greenaway’s snobbism. “Most people,” he announces early, “are visually illiterate.” This, he continues, staring hard into the camera (j’accuse!), helps explain why we have such an “impoverished” cinema.

In brief, the movie functions as an art historical investigation of “The Night Watch,” into which, Mr. Greenaway forcefully argues, “Rembrandt has scrupulously painted an indictment of guilt in paint.” A crime has been committed, the filmmaker asserts, and “it is imperative that we reopen the case.” Completed in 1642, the year that Rembrandt turned 36 (he died in 1669), the painting depicts a large group of guardsmen, along with two women (or girls or dwarfs) and a dog. The painting is said to show the civic guard about to march off to protect Amsterdam, but where others see might and honor, Mr. Greenaway sees a murderous conspiracy and other calumnies. Furthermore, he maintains, Rembrandt lost his commissions, falling into poverty, directly because the painting exposed these crimes.

Mr. Greenaway builds his case on more than 30 mysteries he himself has detected in “The Night Watch.” As he moves through these mysteries, toggling between the painting and scenes from Rembrandt’s life (with Martin Freeman as the great man, and the likes of Jonathan Holmes offering support), Mr. Greenaway trains his eye — and ours — on seemingly every inch of the canvas. Everything is grist for his analytic mill, from the Italian influence to a dead chicken hanging from the waist of one of the female figures. Here a spear isn’t just a spear or even a phallic symbol, but also Rembrandt’s commentary on the prowess and deeds of the militiaman holding the weapon. Mr. Greenaway’s verbal argument is more persuasive than his visual or, more specifically, filmmaking one, which tends to divide the image into intersecting and overlapping squares that greatly resemble software windows, effectively turning the movie screen into a computer monitor.

It’s unfortunate that Film Forum hasn’t put “Rembrandt’s J’Accuse” on a double bill with “Nightwatching.” Both have been packaged together on a recently released American DVD by E1 Entertainment.

[jsteffe]

Has anyone seen the Dutch DVD of Prospero's Books in this set? Is it a decent transfer, and is it widescreen?

[glaswegian tome]

Has anyone seen the Dutch DVD of Prospero's Books in this set? Is it a decent transfer, and is it widescreen?

I have. It is indeed widescreen and it is indeed a decent transfer. Probably the best we'll ever get of this sadly underrated film, unfortunately.

[jsteffe]

I have. It is indeed widescreen and it is indeed a decent transfer. Probably the best we'll ever get of this sadly underrated film, unfortunately.

Thanks! That's really helpful to know. Yes--it's a real shame that this film is not more widely available on DVD. I think it's a masterpiece.