Spoilers follow, but it hardly matters.
Cosmetic amputation, timelapse of rotting corpses. siamese twins fathering twins, bias against black and white animals, a crooked vet who is a Vermeer counterfeiter, and multiple suicides all to children's music. Forget all that. It is just a framework for lush compositions and an ornate allegorical framework.
Pretentious? Preposterous? Predicatory? Naah. This is a wonderful film, much richer symbolically than `Cook,' a stronger narrative than `Drowning,' better photography and music than `Belly,' of the following year. A good Greenaway is something to be relished.
Which is the best Greenaway? This is the best start, I think. `Prospero's Books' and `The Pillow Book' are the most accomplished without compromise. I rank this with `The Draughtsman's Contract,' and `Drowning by Numbers;' all three have concessions to an understandable narrative. `The Falls' is a must, but takes discipline.
But with this film, he has temporarily abandoned the layering and successive self-referential annotation that is his most unique contribution to the art. The only such effort is the thread of a film about the origin of life that is interwoven. One twin searches it for the red herring among the clues, the red herring that explains the trumping of randomness over purpose.
Before viewing, it helps to view the 26 Vermeer paintings.
Cosmetic amputation, timelapse of rotting corpses. siamese twins fathering twins, bias against black and white animals, a crooked vet who is a Vermeer counterfeiter, and multiple suicides all to children's music. Forget all that. It is just a framework for lush compositions and an ornate allegorical framework.
Pretentious? Preposterous? Predicatory? Naah. This is a wonderful film, much richer symbolically than `Cook,' a stronger narrative than `Drowning,' better photography and music than `Belly,' of the following year. A good Greenaway is something to be relished.
Which is the best Greenaway? This is the best start, I think. `Prospero's Books' and `The Pillow Book' are the most accomplished without compromise. I rank this with `The Draughtsman's Contract,' and `Drowning by Numbers;' all three have concessions to an understandable narrative. `The Falls' is a must, but takes discipline.
But with this film, he has temporarily abandoned the layering and successive self-referential annotation that is his most unique contribution to the art. The only such effort is the thread of a film about the origin of life that is interwoven. One twin searches it for the red herring among the clues, the red herring that explains the trumping of randomness over purpose.
Before viewing, it helps to view the 26 Vermeer paintings.