Drowning by Numbers (1988)
Drowning by Numbers (1988)
A Film by Peter Greenaway
DVD9 | ISO+MDS | PAL 16:9 (720x576) | 01:54:03 | 7,52 Gb
Audio: English, Spanish - AC3 2.0 @ 192 Kbps (each track) | Subs: Spanish
Genre: Art-house, Drama | 3 wins | UK, Netherlands
A Film by Peter Greenaway
DVD9 | ISO+MDS | PAL 16:9 (720x576) | 01:54:03 | 7,52 Gb
Audio: English, Spanish - AC3 2.0 @ 192 Kbps (each track) | Subs: Spanish
Genre: Art-house, Drama | 3 wins | UK, Netherlands
Three generations of women, a mother, her daughter and her niece - all called Cissie Colpitts - experience dissatisfaction with their husbands and cause them to drown. The local coroner, an inveterate game player called Madgett, is drawn into a plot to disguise the murders. The story is paced by the numbers one to one-hundred, which appear sequentially through the film.
IMDB
I was ready to shut this movie off during the opening credits. A young girl skips rope as she names the stars in the cadence of her count to 100. "13 - Rigel, 14 … " - get it? Now you'd think most filmmakers would pick up this little symbol at a point near its end, but not Peter Greenaway. We see the whole count in real time. I nearly fell asleep before the movie title appeared, thinking it was going to be a Greenaway pretension-fest like Prospero's Books.
I'm glad I didn't give up.
Drowning by Numbers (1988)
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Of course, it never did become a normal movie. This is one weird effort, a Salvador Dali painting come to life, but beneath the madness it is also a charming entertainment. The counting to 100 in the rope-jump prefigures the appearance of the numbers one through a hundred in sequence throughout the movie. It's fun after a while to see if you can spot them or to predict their appearance.
Drowning by Numbers (1988)
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The plot, such as it is, centers around three women with the same name who all drown their husbands, with the assistance of the coroner, an inveterate gamesman who protects the women from the law in return for sexual favors. It's quirky, personal filmmaking, and the main characters are all utterly amoral. I'm assuming they really are three separate women, but that is by no means certain. Maybe they aren't real at all. They are, but they aren't.
Does the plot really matter? It's a black comedy, and a puzzle. "The play's the thing."
Drowning by Numbers (1988)
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Who else but Peter Greenaway could have written the dryly amusing script? Who else but Greenaway could have imagined the ethereal landscape, which was not unlike Prospero's Island in Greenaway's version of The Tempest. The visual presentation is poetic and rich with symbols. One might even say "cluttered with symbols", or just plain "cluttered." The camera angles are unusual, befitting the material photographed. For my money, nobody creates a richer texture of visual imagery than Greenaway, and his vision is truly unique. You will not mistake this film for the work of any other director.
Drowning by Numbers (1988)
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For me, the only disappointment was an unsatisfying ending. Besides the ones I mentioned, the other main character in the film is the coroner's bizarre number-obsessed son, who narrates, and actually does most of the numbering that marks the progress of the film. The ultimate fate of that boy-narrator seemed unduly harsh to me. Oh, I guess this was how it had to end. I couldn't come up with a better solution to the puzzle, but I just wanted some of the characters to fare better than they did. Still and all, it was Greenaway's game, and that's how he played it.
I'm not sure why anyone financed this film, because the potential audience is small, but I sure liked it. I have seen nine of Greenaway's movies, and this is my favorite.Johnny Web, scoopy.com
Drowning by Numbers (1988)
Following his pair of despairing urban studies, A Zed and Two Noughts and The Belly of an Architect, director Peter Greenaway turned to the sardonic countryside of The Draughtsman's Contract for another tongue-in-cheek murder yarn, Drowning by Numbers. Easily his most playful film in every sense of the term, this tricky and often charming film boasts some of his wittiest dialogue and makes for an ideal introduction for newcomers compared to his more experimental works.
Drowning by Numbers (1988)
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One of the most sumptuous English films ever made, Drowning by Numbers revels in sun-dappled fields, moonwashed forests, and rippling bodies of water. All of the performers rattle off their tricky patter perfectly, and Greenaway loads the films with an encyclopedic collection of games, both literal and psychological. The film also features his most audacious and entertaining visual gimmick, outdoing the sequential drawings of Draughtsman or the color-coded rooms of The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover. Here the numbers 1 to 100 are contained within the film, in order, hidden somewhere from the first scene to the last; thus, viewers can either focus on the plot or simply have fun playing numeric hide and seek. This William Castle-style device is also thematically appropriate, drawing the viewer into playing along with the characters and firmly announcing when the game is finally over.
Drowning by Numbers (1988)
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The trademark Greenaway nudity is still in abundance, with the shapely Richardson getting most of the attention, but the sexual and violent content is extremely mild (even borderline mainstream) compared to his subsequent work. Sonically this may be his richest film as well thanks to Michael Nyman's astonishing score, partially derived from Mozart and filled with moments of musical brilliance. A wonderful treasure of a film well worth exploring.
Drowning by Numbers (1988)
Special Features:
- Interview with Peter Greenaway about the film
- Filmography and other trivia
Drowning by Numbers (1988)
Many Thanks to Pakito.
No More Mirrors.