Customer Reviews

Drowning by Numbers

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Peter Greenaway's art house approach is most certainly not for everyone. I've seen most of his films, and some I could leave behind (Zed, Draughtmans) while others (I consider Prospero's Books an absolute masterpiece) I would happily indulge in again. Drowning By Numbers is one. It is a deliciously executed black comedy, highly eccentric (what do all those sheep have to do with the tide?) with great performances. Twisted plot (not plot twists, mind you. Just twisted). It all adds up to great fun.

Greenway's most excellent portrayal of the battle of the sexes is one of his most thoroughly enjoyable movies. Drawing heavily on Greek myth, and the archetypes of Air as masculine element and Water as feminine, Greenway weaves a lush tapestry of cerebral and visual stimuli that overwhelms the senses.

Three women, a Hecate-like trinity with the same name and reflecting the classical three "ages" of Crone, Mother and (granted, sexually wanton) Maiden, find the men in their lives disappointing. Women, being emotional beings of primal water, seek fulfillment in that element, whereas men, being intellectual beings of primal air, spend their days quantifying things, typing memoranda or investigating plots. The three (four?) husbands are shown the error of their ways, literally being immersed in the watery primal element, and deprived of their more familiar air. The first is a philanderer, the second cold and insensitive, the third a threat to the sisterhood of the three, and the final consort one who attempts to control the trinity through blackmail, and ultimately finds himself the pawn of their sex.

The imagery, while lacking the lavish costumes of other Greenway productions, is still tremendously lavish. The scene from the bath, involving no more than fruit, insects and the foam on a bar of soap, creates a primal, evocative image of the natural feminine power of control while working through nature, the very power which threatens men to their core. It's beautiful, and while the plot may be straightforward, the underlying messages conveyed are sufficiently profound to keep one busy discussing the film for weeks after every viewing.

`Drowning By Numbers', written and directed by Peter Greenaway and released in 1987 may be the perfect refutation to Susan Sontag's claim that cinema is no longer `poetic and mysterious and erotic and moral - all at the same time' (See `The New Yorker', Sept. 12, 2005). This is not Greenaway's best-known movie. That distinction is probably owned by `The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, & Her Lover', although I can almost guarantee that if you liked `The Thief...', you will like `Drowning By Numbers'. In fact, I believe our current subject is easily the better movie, purely on the basis of my most important criteria, rewatchability.

When you watch a film by Bergmann or Fellini or Kurasawa, you sense there may be literary, biblical, social, and historical references scattered about in the dialogue and the `set decoration'. When you watch a Greenaway film, there is no doubt about the fact that Greenaway is playing with your mind with his dialogue, business, and visual imagery. The problem is that while some are obvious, others are delightfully subtle. The most obvious image is in numbers and counting, heralded by the title itself. The movie opens with a young girl's skipping rope to a counting off of the names of 100 stars in the night sky. The theme permeates the movie with the appearance of `most' numbers between one and one hundred printed, stitched or drawn on some piece of scenery or prop. While I have watched this movie at least four or five times, I cannot say with certainty that every number between 1 and 100 actually appears in the scenery. I have yet to see number 1, although number 100 is impossible to miss at the end of the movie. I also believe that not all the numbers appear in strict arithmetic order. Some two or three or four appear all at once, and in these situations, there is no attempt to keep them in order.

The basic plot is extremely simple. In fact, I suspect that some of the absurdities played out in the story would be totally lost if the part of the story of which you can make some sense was the least bit complicated. It is so simple, I will not recite it here.

One of the allusions made to counting is created by the presence of sheep in several scenes. The reference to counting sheep as an aid to falling asleep is not hidden, but spoken plainly enough about two thirds of the way through the movie. Greenaway builds on this by having one of the principle characters, the boy, Smut, be obsessed with counting, whether it be hairs on a dog or leaves on a tree or insects in his collection. This seeming digression wraps around to the main subject of the story when we see Smut counting deaths of animals, mostly as road kill on the local country road surrounded by both wild and domestic animals. This fascination with death Smut celebrates with amateur fireworks. I would love to connect the fireworks to some other theme in the film, but that bit of mystery is beyond me at this time.

Sheep and counting and death are also folded into the obsession of the principle make character, Madgett, Smut's father and the local coroner, who constantly creates games, mostly nonsensical games strongly reminiscent of some events in Lewis Carrol's tales of heroine Alice underground and through the looking glass. Sheep and games come together as Smut oversees an experiment to determine if sheep can detect the time at which the tides change from going out to coming in and vise versa.

If it is not clear already, Greenaway does absurdity for absurdity's sake. What he clearly does not do is nudity and sexuality for their own sake. Just as in `The Thief...', there is some nudity, but it is all used to clearly establish motives and make you sense, with the character to which the display is aimed, the strength of the emotions and corresponding actions. So, if you have no taste for absurdity or nudity in a dramatic context, then I suggest you give this film a bye.

On the other hand, if you are especially fond of some of the finer points of cinematic crafts and shotmaking, this is a film you want to see. It does not have the great enhancement of realism as done by Eisenstein and copied by Orson Wells in, for example, `Citizen Kane'. It does, however, have the lush visual inventiveness of Terry Gilliam, taken to a whole new level. It's totally baroque, as if Greenaway studied shotmaking from Peter Breughel or Herionymus Bosch.

If you see more than one Greenaway movie, you may not agree that `Drowning By Numbers' is the best, although I think the simplicity of its plot makes it a lot easier to appreciate Greenaway's visual and logical twists and turns.

Highly recommended for the cinematically adventurous.

Not for those who wish mindless entertainment, Greenaway's film is a gorgeous meditation on counting, sexuality, games, water, and death. Repeat viewing only yields fresh references and meanings in a movie more rife with allusion, metaphor and symbolism than a semiotics primer. The film confounds every attempt at summarization and dismissal--typical of Greenaway overall. A personal favorite of his oeuvre for the touches of humor, endless intellectual play, and a trio of females that stand like titans among the males. Structuralists, be warned: you have your work cut out for you in trying to critique this one. God knows I've tried.

The film begins with a little girl counting 100 stars while skipping, and so unfolds the location of numbers one to one hundred in order on obscure objects such as bathtubs and dead cows. Whilst we try, and are eager to spot these, we also revel in the bizarre, surreal and lavish artistic cinematic tastes of Greenaway. This film reminded me slightly of the film It Couldn't Happen Here starring the Pet Shop Boys, filmed in a similar location and fashion, and a film of the utter eccentricity of England and complete Englishness. I recommend this picture because of its blatant stylistic touches; and watch it several times because the numbers are not easily spotted first time around. It's an amusing, but sometimes scabrous film.

I didn't know what to expect from this movie. I had heard about it, and read reviews from both camps (anti and pro-greenaway). From the opening scene to the credits, i was taken on a wild journey. Numbers, death, and an unmistakeable greenaway humour that left me gasping for more. an unforgettable experience. thank you peter greenaway....

One of my fave films. But I want to use this space to ask why, in the name of a hundred stars, why this is _still_ not available on DVD in US format?

The previously read commentaries of the film are all valid, but for those of us that, after viewing the film with all its texural variations, might want to follow some of the obvious visual games implied in the title of this extraordinary work, it's a lot of fun.

My friends and I have always enjoyed the game of locating ALL of the "Numbers" implied in the title. This, of course is dependant on how close to the original theatrical aspect ratio you get. It doesn't work well at all in a full-screen edition.

This game is difficult if you're only paying attention to the cast and the storyline of these splendid characters portrayed on-screen.

To properly play the game, I feel that the viewer must be sufficiently acquainted with the story and its twists and turns, to follow the digital progression from start to finish. To keep this fun element in the film, must have been difficult at best, as it precludes the transposition of scenes for the sake of goosing up the storyline. The editing had to done progressively or other scenes would have to be reshot, in order to properly continue the numerical progression.

This provides a fun diversion in the storyline in what must have been a nerve-wracking way to shoot and assemble a motion picture.

This movie is definitely not for those who want to sit back and mindlessly consume a story. This brilliant movie is thought provoking, annoying, disturbing at times and quite bizarre. Those who have a knowledge of cinematography will appreciate this film, or anyone interested in the art of film making. The best way for me to truly discribe this surreal peice of work is to say, take your weirdest dream that made absolutely no sense to you upon waking - and you have the essence of Drowning by Numbers. Just when you think you understand what is happening, or going to happen, the story changes tact and you are hurled back into a state of confusion. I thoroughly enjoyed this film and could watch it again and again. I'm sure I would discover things I had missed during previous viewings. However, I was the only person out of approximately 20 people who didn't find the film either boring or stupid. My advice is to watch it atleast once and see if you can spot the numbers from 1-100. It's definitely an experience - whether you enjoy it or hate it.

This film is definately worth owning, as it bears repeat viewing. I have seen it many, many times, and I still haven't been able to see all of the numbers. The soundtrack is incredible. The story is dark and humourous at the same time. The plot is interspersed with games made up by the characters. Some of them are just whimsical (like Sheep and Tides), others have dark parallels to the plot itself (like Dead-Man's Catch, or the strange variation on Cricket played during the wedding). I am a big fan of Peter Greenaway, and this is definitely my favorite. In fact, this is one of my favorite movies ever, and I just cannot figure out why they haven't released it on DVD!