I’m continuing my 80s arthouse cinema festival with this movie, which I saw at the Cinematheque back in the 80s, but remember exactly nothing about.
Is this the basis of a meme?
Ah, yes, twelve drawings… Which reminds me of The Falls, which I also saw at the Cinematheque. Which is a 92-part series of interviews with people who experienced the Violent Unexplained Event. It was really cool — more than half of the already thin audience disappeared during the viewing.
I mean, it’s more than three hours long, and while it does have a kind of cumulative effect, it’s a lot.
So this is scaling it down a bit.
This is a fascinating movie, but I’m not sure whether the fascination comes from what’s actually happening or because of the cod-Shakespearean dialogue which makes things hover on the edges of comprehensibility.
And, of course, Michael Nyman’s cod-Philip Glass soundtrack doesn’t hurt.
This restored blu ray edition is a bit weird? The white bits are really #fff — they seem digital and blown out. It might have been that way on the original film, but that would have been pretty odd.
And see? There’s like VHS-like artefacts on this, and of course this hasn’t been near a video, so that’s just weird.
It’s like they’ve over-sharpened the film when transferring to digital?
Ah:
In 2003 the BFI restored the film digitally and this restoration was released on DVD.
It was digitised in 2003? That was the worst possible time, because the tech around that time was just horrible.
Ah yeah. It’s extremely 80s, what with the sort of meta mystery embedded in the movie — and it’s also very unpleasant, what with all the sexual abuse the protagonist (well, perhaps not protagonist, but the main character) perpetrates with a presumed snicker from the audience.
So the Shocking Upper Class Ending falls flat, because I really wanted that guy to die, anyway. And their burning the artwork was supposed to be extra super shocking, but the artwork isn’t very good, so…
I’ve been wondering why there’s no Greenaway movies on the Best Of List, and now I kinda understand: This movie is brilliantly made, but it’s bullshit.
The Draughtman’s Contract. Peter Greenaway. 1982. ⚃
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