Peter Greenaway - The Draughtsman's Contract (1982)

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PLOT SYNOPSIS
The action is set in the director's beloved 17th century. Ambitious young artist Mr. Neville (Anthony Higgins) is invited by Mrs. Herbert (Janet Suzman) to make 12 elaborate sketches of her estate. Besides money, the contract includes sexual favors that Mrs. Herbert will offer to the draughtsman in the absence of Mr. Herbert. Entirely confident in his ability to weave a web of intrigues, Mr. Neville eventually becomes a victim of someone else's elaborate scheme. The film is structured as a sophisticated intellectual puzzle like the ones popular in the 17th century. There is a lot to pay attention to besides the intrigues -- fancy wigs, conversations by candlelight, English parks, Purcell-inspired baroque music by Michael Nyman, all to please the eyes, soothe the ears, and stimulate the mind.

REVIEWS
Like all of Greenaway's work, The Draughtsman's Contract addresses issues of representation: between mediums (drawn and photographic representation); between art and nature (the inbreeding between landscape art and ornamental garden design); and the value of classical naturalism in art.
[...]
The Draughtsman's Contract is still the best introduction to Greenaway's work. It articulates the themes that dominated his films from the early '70s to the late '80s, and its minimal formal devices anticipate the changes that were to occur in Darwin (1992) and Prospero's Books (1991). Speaking recently, he said "It would be impossible for me to make The Draughtsman's Contract now. My interests would be very different, so much so that, at last, after long resistance, I am negotiating for an American company to remake it." (4) One wonders why someone who speaks with such vehemence of the sentimental laziness of American movies would permit them to remake one of his own. The film, by Hollywood standards, is unsatisfying: the murderers are never revealed; conflicts aren't resolved. One suspects somebody as keen on interdisciplinary permutations as Greenaway would be curious about what such a remake would reveal about his own work. He proudly slides from medium to medium, self reference to external reference, with the same set of issues and themes: he doesn't make definitive statements on one subject, and then move onto another, but rather repeats variations upon the same subjects and allows the differing ideas that result to accumulate. For someone who operates like this, a remake could be seen as another variation, and thus an extension, of their own work - one that, unlike their own work, can be conveniently disowned if ruined in the process.

excerpt from SensesOfCinema review

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Thursday, April 29, 2010

Peter Greenaway - The Draughtsman's Contract (1982)

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