Joan PlowrightDrowning By Numbers (Blu-ray + DVD) [2015]

This is the one Greenaway film from the 1980s I had never seen before so this was a treat for me. It is pure Greenaway from the opening moments as he plays games with the audience with a two hour, sometimes very black fairy story. It’s an amazing experience providing you realise that it is a pure fantasy: there is no pretence that this is the real world. Greenaway wanted to move away from traditional narratively based film making to something more abstract and does it very well here. Some of the games he plays are obvious: others are not. There is half hour film extra from the time with him discussing it in minimalist fashion plus a longer 2015 interview with him that takes us into his mind. You can argue that a film should stand on its own and not need explanation. However, he throws so many riddles and ideas at so many levels that it is very useful to hear about the ones missed. If your taste is mainstream multiplex then stay clear. If you want something to challenge and provoke then Greenaway offers this. However, this is not the film to start with if you want to see his cinema. ‘The Draughtsman’s Contract’ and ‘The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover” are a bit more accessible for the novice – though sadly neither are available on blu ray at the time of writing.

Greenaway, always madenning and dividing opinion, at his most moving and English.Exquisite Sacha Vierny visuals, post modern music by Michael Nyman, courtesy of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.A trio of grand female actors, Steveson, Richardson (Joley ot Miranda) and Ploughwright, wondering at what she has agreed to participate in.The English, mainly male, preoccupation with collecting, cataloguing and games.Greenaway, ever the helpful curator, offers a tour guide for the uninitiated and possibly phobic which is a informative Coles Notes to understanding and appreciation and is, rarely, a really useful extra.Together with Kate Bush's songs, 'England, My Lionheart' and Powell ad Pressburger's 'A Canterbury Tale', it tells the interested foreigner everything you ever wanted to know about the English but were afraid to ask.It strongly reminded me of Alain Resnais's Providence, made a decade earlier and of course written by an Englishman, David Mercer, and peopled by English actors, .Warner, Bogarde and Gielgud. Knowing how much Greenaway appreciated Resnais, even conscripting his cameraman, I wonder if it was a conscious influence and hommage.I have mixed feelings about Greenaway but I am grateful that he exists in the often philistine British film industry, a world away from the social realist, leftist pamphleteer Loach and, to a lesser extent Leigh, that against all the odds occasionally produces off beat talents like Michael Powell, Nicholas Roeg and even, especially early, Ken Russell.

The tale of three wives (Joan Plowright, Juliet Stevenson, Joely Richardson) who murder their husbands, all by drowning, and have their crimes concealed thanks to an amorous local coroner (Bernard Hill). Straightforward story? This is a Peter Greenaway black comedy and, as such, far from clear-cut in either in its format or telling, with distractions along the way (the wives are all named Cissie Colpitts, a strange boy who collects bugs and celebrates funerals with fireworks, a skipping girl and more). I first saw it as a cinema release, almost thirty years ago, and Greenaway’s mystifying approach to storytelling stuck in my mind. Now released in BluRay, the fascination remains with the experience enhanced by this superb high definition restoration.Peter Greenaway trained as a painter and injects a painter’s vision throughout the film’s 114 minute running time. He doesn’t present the story in the manner of other filmmakers – as illustrated text, with an obvious beginning, a centre and an end – but declared cinema as an art form perfectly suited (in his case, at least) as a painter’s medium. So he creates pastoral images alongside keeping the imagination of his audience working with puzzles and games in a tale that concentrates upon two universal subjects, sex and death.As anyone aware of Peter Greenaway’s work, this is not mainstream cinema. It is unique and, with his other films, best absorbed – and more rewarding – with several viewings.

Peter Greenaway should be praised for this cinematic experience and the blu-ray format is a vast improvement on my original viewing in 1988. The interviews with Greenaway in “extras” are well worth watching. One of the great exports of Newport, Monmouthshire!

This should be called 'drowning by numbers' but is called Greenway although is the same film. The cover is written in foreign language but hopefully the film will be in English. Not watched it yet

Strangely surreal and quite quirky but a really interesting watch and I found it charming. Not for fans of mainstream cinema, but for film snobs who prefer something a little more abstract and arty, a good watch.

What a gorgeous film. Beautiful. The master.

Gteat