PETER GREENAWAY -- For the Uninitiated! *SPOILERS* *SPOLERS* *SPOILERS*

Peter Greenaway, filmmaker extraordinaire!

VISIT GREENAWAY'S WONDERFUL WEBSITE:
http://petergreenaway.co.uk/

"The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover" is certainly the best of Greenaway's accessible works and includes so many of the essential Greenaway components: meticulous mise-en-scene and wide-frame shots (a nod to the great cinematographer Sacha Vierny is in line here), extremely formal direaction (Greenaway is heavy-handed FOLKS!), obsessive use of symmetry, Michael Nyman soundtrack, full-frontal male/female nudity, and a hell of a cast (Michael Gambon and Helen Mirren are irrepressible! A+ performances. Nice to see Tim Roth too!). Although this isn't my favorite Greenaway (it's so hard to choose), it's a gem and almost always the first of his films that I play for the uninitiated.

The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, And Her Lover

If I were to arrange the films for an unitiated viewer, my list would be something like:

The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover

Drowning By Numbers -- really gets you into the sequential Greenaway, counting, and alphabetizing, and the strange and wonderful game rules for "Hangman's Cricket," bug collections, circumcision, astronomy, and three separate characters named Cissie Collpitts.

Drowning by Numbers

ZOO (A Zed and Two Naughts) -- one of my favorites (just look at my tribe profile!); The 'history of life' movie-inside-a-movie, more alphabetics, siamese twins (gotta love the symmetries), and a plot that while convoluted (if you don't like convolution, don't turn to Greenaway in the first place) is actually completely logical and exposed in a genius unfolding throughout the movie.

ZOO (A Zed & Two Naughts)

Prospero's Books -- This could be my all-time favorite Greenaway. Maybe Michael Nyman's best Greenaway score, a free shakespeare adaptation of the Tempest (again, one of my favorite shakespearian films ever!), THOSE WONDERFULLY NARRATED BOOKS, this piece will introduce the Greenaway film concept of collage: layers upon layers of illustrations, writing, pictures, frame in frame, endless complexity of detail, and a wonderful job by shakespearean actor John Gielgud! This is one of the most creative and expressive pieces that I've found with Peter Greenaway.

Prospero's Books

The Draughtman's Contract -- a murder mystery 'period' piece, greenaways first full-length motion picture release (The Falls, while 4 hours, was a graduate work), it shows much of his budding creativity and filmic style: red herrings, abstract and unexplained characters, early iterations of names he uses again, illustrations, paintings, all of his typical palette (Greenaway was a painter before a filmmaker, you know). This will show expose the roots that Greenaway later masters and uses so eloquently in the aforementioned masterpieces.

READ MY REVIEW OF THE DRAUGHTMAN'S CONTRACT!

The Draughtsman's Contract

-The Baby of Macon (for HARDCORE Greenaway lovers): I consider this one of the most difficult Greenaway works to apprehend; it's also very difficult to find in the US--as it was never released due to it's shocking content (mass rape/gore). It's a quasi-opera that's based on the concept of the Miracle Play: a ritual play that was organized for the gentry and depicted the birth of Christ so that the invited royals could feel as if they witnessed the 'miraculous' event. This piece is Greenaways response to a certain thread of anti-abortion legislation that was being passed in England around the time the film was produced. The piece is visually striking, for instance, the introduction features a deteriorating leper on a swing painfully trying to speak and choking and swallowing strangely, "CO-PUL-A-TION..." he starts.

The Baby of Macon

-The Falls: his early thesis, includes so many kernals and theses that he will explode in later film over a series of 92 short segments in one of the first MOCKUMENTARY works that I know of; It runs nearly 4 hours and when I approach it these days, I tend to just savor a few segments. I have, of course, been diehard enough to make it through a single sitting with this piece. "Goosey, Goosey, Gander.").

Beyond that, if they are not convinced of anything redeeming to be found in this film master, I doubt they will ever be very interested. People tend to either love or hate Greenaway. I'm not a big fan of his Neo-Japanese, post-Nyman works (The Pillow Book / 8 1/2 Women). His short films are certainly entertaining and highlight many of his talents. The Belly of an Architect was just awful; almost like some hack imitation instead of the real thing. Everyone has to have a dud in their oeuvre. Overall though, I think that cinema has never been the same since Peter Greenaway took to the camera and the pen.

Enjoy,
JUSTIN "ZED ZEBRA"