andrew markworthy
Senior HTF Member
- Joined
- Sep 30, 1999
- Messages
- 4,762
Picked up the first release in what promises to be a comprehensive series of Peter Greenaway movies on R2, issued through the BFI (British Film Institute).
Zed and Two Noughts, Greenaway's second feature film, is in many ways his most opaque movie (and this is against stiff competition). The plot in brief: separated siamese twins lose their wives in a car accident in which another woman in the car loses a leg. The twins have an affair with this woman (who is persuaded to have her healthy leg amputated for the sake of symmetry whilst posing for facsimiles of Vermeer paintings), who produces twins, and then dies. The twins are engaged in doing time lapse photography of decaying zoo animals, and as the summation of their work, decide they will kill themselves and photograph their decay.
Most people by this stage have either decided 'my kind of movie' or (*far* more commonly) 'pretentious drivel'. It's difficult not to form strong opinions about Greenaway's work. However, I would strongly urge you to see this movie and play the director's commentary. It reveals a large amount of the rationale behind the movie, and you begin to realise that it makes perfect sense once you learn the visual grammar being employed. By conventional narrative rules the movie is overblown and trite, but Greenaway is using the film not to 'tell a story' in the conventional sense, but rather to present a series of tableaux exploring fairly heady stuff (the uses of light; the idea of symmetry; Darwinian evolution). Arguably there is rather *too* much going on - in his later movies and in his first and most accessible (The Draughtsman's Contract) things are more pared-down. However, it is well worth seeing. I wasn't a huge Greenaway fan and bought this disc on a whim, but I'm glad I did.
The transfer and sound are both okay, but a bit 'soft' (having said this, I saw the movie when it first opened and it appeared 'soft' then as well). There are some good extras - the commentary (wonderful) and various additional things (film of rotting fruit and animals glimpsed in the film - warning, don't watch after a heavy meal!; a copy of the press release giving a synopsis of the movie; excerpts from a 'making of' documentary).
The next movie to be released will be Draughtsman's Contract in a couple of weeks' time.
Zed and Two Noughts, Greenaway's second feature film, is in many ways his most opaque movie (and this is against stiff competition). The plot in brief: separated siamese twins lose their wives in a car accident in which another woman in the car loses a leg. The twins have an affair with this woman (who is persuaded to have her healthy leg amputated for the sake of symmetry whilst posing for facsimiles of Vermeer paintings), who produces twins, and then dies. The twins are engaged in doing time lapse photography of decaying zoo animals, and as the summation of their work, decide they will kill themselves and photograph their decay.
Most people by this stage have either decided 'my kind of movie' or (*far* more commonly) 'pretentious drivel'. It's difficult not to form strong opinions about Greenaway's work. However, I would strongly urge you to see this movie and play the director's commentary. It reveals a large amount of the rationale behind the movie, and you begin to realise that it makes perfect sense once you learn the visual grammar being employed. By conventional narrative rules the movie is overblown and trite, but Greenaway is using the film not to 'tell a story' in the conventional sense, but rather to present a series of tableaux exploring fairly heady stuff (the uses of light; the idea of symmetry; Darwinian evolution). Arguably there is rather *too* much going on - in his later movies and in his first and most accessible (The Draughtsman's Contract) things are more pared-down. However, it is well worth seeing. I wasn't a huge Greenaway fan and bought this disc on a whim, but I'm glad I did.
The transfer and sound are both okay, but a bit 'soft' (having said this, I saw the movie when it first opened and it appeared 'soft' then as well). There are some good extras - the commentary (wonderful) and various additional things (film of rotting fruit and animals glimpsed in the film - warning, don't watch after a heavy meal!; a copy of the press release giving a synopsis of the movie; excerpts from a 'making of' documentary).
The next movie to be released will be Draughtsman's Contract in a couple of weeks' time.
).
