Nightwatching. (18.)
Directed by Peter Greenaway.
Starring Martin Freeman, Eva Birtwhistle, Emily Holmes, Jodhi May, Natalie Press. 135 mins
For a filmmaker who is known to be stronger on list making and categorisation than emotional involvement or narrative, the incredibly neatness with which Greenaway’s career can be defined by the decades is wholly appropriate.
Seventies – experimental features.
Eighties – improbable but striking mainstream success culminating in Barry Norman naming The Cook, The Thief etc as one of his ten best films of the decade.
Nineties - a split with composer Michael Nyman and a gradual relinquishing of his mainstream appeal.
The belated release of Nightwatching, which was made in 2007, means that a whole decade passed without having a Greenaway film theatrically released in Britain. The decade has been spent on more experimental multi-media projects (primarily the almost entirely unseen Tulse Luper Suitcases) or digital installations designed to reveal the secrets of great paintings.
The first of these installations was for Rembrandt’s Nightwatching and the film posits that the painting is an elaborate accusation of murder. Indeed, the film could be seen as a knowing poke at The Da Vinci Code; instead of a painting’s mystery being decoded we get to see the artist encoding a mystery into his work.
It feels like an attempt to lure back his old fans. (Time’s are tough and the opening credits show that no fewer than eleven separate funding bodies were enticed to chuck some coins into the pot to fund this one.) It’s going back to all the things we used to like – a Draughtsman’s Contract style mystery, the camera panning across theatrical sets, the exquisitely lit recreation of poses from famous artworks.
The magic though hasn’t returned. It doesn’t have the energy, drive or vitality of his great films. Characters talk and talk about conspiracies and plots but it all seems arbitrary; the dialogue is an indecipherable wall of sound. It’s unvarying and relentless, loads of exposition dialogue laid on top of a series or tableaux all of which look much like the one before, and all of which look much like something Greenaway’s done before
Freeman plays Rembrandt as a cocksure, foul mouthed lower class rebel. It’s an attempt to give the film a rousing, barnstorming central performance in the manner of Michael Gambon or Brian Dennehy; but it just seems contrived.
Or maybe it’s all ironic: an examination of a static piece of figurative art that reveals a story, through the medium of a static piece of cinematic art that doesn’t.
Directed by Peter Greenaway.
Starring Martin Freeman, Eva Birtwhistle, Emily Holmes, Jodhi May, Natalie Press. 135 mins
For a filmmaker who is known to be stronger on list making and categorisation than emotional involvement or narrative, the incredibly neatness with which Greenaway’s career can be defined by the decades is wholly appropriate.
Seventies – experimental features.
Eighties – improbable but striking mainstream success culminating in Barry Norman naming The Cook, The Thief etc as one of his ten best films of the decade.
Nineties - a split with composer Michael Nyman and a gradual relinquishing of his mainstream appeal.
The belated release of Nightwatching, which was made in 2007, means that a whole decade passed without having a Greenaway film theatrically released in Britain. The decade has been spent on more experimental multi-media projects (primarily the almost entirely unseen Tulse Luper Suitcases) or digital installations designed to reveal the secrets of great paintings.
The first of these installations was for Rembrandt’s Nightwatching and the film posits that the painting is an elaborate accusation of murder. Indeed, the film could be seen as a knowing poke at The Da Vinci Code; instead of a painting’s mystery being decoded we get to see the artist encoding a mystery into his work.
It feels like an attempt to lure back his old fans. (Time’s are tough and the opening credits show that no fewer than eleven separate funding bodies were enticed to chuck some coins into the pot to fund this one.) It’s going back to all the things we used to like – a Draughtsman’s Contract style mystery, the camera panning across theatrical sets, the exquisitely lit recreation of poses from famous artworks.
The magic though hasn’t returned. It doesn’t have the energy, drive or vitality of his great films. Characters talk and talk about conspiracies and plots but it all seems arbitrary; the dialogue is an indecipherable wall of sound. It’s unvarying and relentless, loads of exposition dialogue laid on top of a series or tableaux all of which look much like the one before, and all of which look much like something Greenaway’s done before
Freeman plays Rembrandt as a cocksure, foul mouthed lower class rebel. It’s an attempt to give the film a rousing, barnstorming central performance in the manner of Michael Gambon or Brian Dennehy; but it just seems contrived.
Or maybe it’s all ironic: an examination of a static piece of figurative art that reveals a story, through the medium of a static piece of cinematic art that doesn’t.
