The year 1642 marks the turning point in the life of the famous Dutch painter, Rembrandt, turning him from a wealthy respected celebrity into a discredited pauper. At the insistence of his pregnant wife Saskia, Rembrandt has reluctantly agreed to paint the Amsterdam Musketeer Militia in a group portrait that will later become to be known as “The Nightwatch.” He soon discovers that there is a conspiracy afoot with the Amsterdam merchants playing at soldiers maneuvering for financial advantage and personal power in, that time, the richest city in the Western World. Rembrandt stumbles on a foul murder. Confident in the birth of a longed-for son and heir, Rembrandt is determined to expose the conspiring murderers and builds his accusation meticulously in the form of the commissioned painting, uncovering the seamy and hypocritical side to Dutch Society in the Golden Age. –IMDb
An avant-gardist who earned surprising access to the mainstream, Peter Greenaway is among the most ambitious and controversial filmmakers of his era. Trained as a painter and heavily influenced by theories of structural linguistics, ethnography, and philosophy, Greenaway’s films traversed often unprecedented ground, consistently exploring the boundaries of the medium by rejecting formal narrative structures in favor of awe-striking imagery, shifting meanings, and mercurial emotional tension; fascinated by formal symmetries and parallels, his material displayed an almost obsessive interest in list-making and cataloguing, earning equal notoriety for its provocative eroticism as well as its almost self-conscious pretentiousness. Born April 5, 1942, in Newport, Wales, Greenaway was raised primarily in nearby Chingford. After deciding at the age of 12 to become a painter, he entered the Walthamstow College of Art. By 1965, Greenaway had begun working as a film editor for the Central Office… read more
A different piece indeed. It took a moment to adjust to the filming style which allowed me to pause at any moment to capture a painting in motion. I found the first hour quite captivating and the plot fascinating. I couldn't help but enjoy the lead role. The music as well was quite fantastic. Yet the last hour was a bit of a cluster. A Greenway I have found the most easy to get entrenched in.
But first, New York's Film Forum is marking the 20th anniversary of Abbas Kiarostami's Close-Up with a one-week run for a new 35mm print
Nightwatching, apparently Greenaway’s 15th film proper, tells the story of Rembrandt Van Rijn’s painting ‘The Nightwatch’ and its conception. In the British director’s version of events, Rembrandt… read review