I'm in awe of Greenaway's talents as a director. His cinema is so original in comparison to anything else out there. I do not care for all of his films, but the ones I do appreciate, I really, really admire.
Partially for personal reasons...the particular point I was at in my life...seeing The Draughtman's Contract remains my favourite film and has affected my aethetics, preferences in narrative and sense of humour permanently. The Screen on the Hill at Belsize Park is fixed point in my firmament.
It's interesting because modern film sadly isn't about seeing something new, rather it's about seeing something visualized that you have already seen, heard, read. Even the greats as Kubrick, Tarkovsky etc etc use books as their source material, I think what people crave is narrative, not visual stimuli there are plenty of "experimental" films that are pure visuals, and those aren't going to entertain someone for 3 hours. I do believe what he says has merit though I think people get stuck way to hard on traditional narrative structure and it ends up really limiting the types of storys and visuals you can use
You raise a good point - I think of modern day commercials - which do have some textual basis but are overall much more imagistic than narrative films. But nobody really remembers commercials - so it seems a greater context is needed for images to shine and that context seems to be narrative.
I feel so grateful to film-makers like Greenaway, or Tarkovsky, or Bergman for pushing the medium in directions not normally explored by mainstream Hollywood, for instance. Film is a relatively young medium and as such still very malleable (or should be). Why always linear narratives? Why always explanatory dialogue or voice-over's? Trust (or educate) your audience, film-makers!! Do we always (immediately or at all) "understand" every work of art we experience? Of course not, so why should film be any different!?!
Greenaway tought us one amazing way to understand films, but he is not obsessed by the idea to understand a movie completly. Therefore I'm grateful that artists like Tarkowski, Greenaway, Almodóvar, Hosokawa, Hitchcock and the unforgotten Pina Bausch from Wuppertal Dance Théâtre influenced my way of thinking, self-awareness and reflection a lot. The "Greenaway" episode in my life was just the moment, when I decided to study chemistry, not art history. I'm quite worried about the uncertain future of small cinemas in the SarsCov Crisis, about the influence of mainstream Hollywood and Bollywood, and moreover about the way Netflix is concepting new films based only on economic success, to fulfill the "obvious" expectations of the audience. The level of physical violence, horror and bizarre stunts in so-called "Block Busters" is disgusting and far from real, far from Vilsmaier. My recommendation is 16 y.o. Grace Vanderwaal, not the Disney movie, but her music and poetry, she went on headline tour with her band and her dog at the age of 13, she's at least as funny and inspiring as literature nobel price winner Elfriede Jelinek.
Excuse the mound of text: Greenaway - and I'm only speaking to his films here - has always seemed to have this sort of tug and pull dichotomy between high society/high art and paradoxically the most banal, base aspects of culture, society, etc. He teeters somehow on a complex mirage of artifice and utterly stripped down, [poetically] simplistic, brutal frankness (often in a hellish inversion of British gentility, par for the satire) skewing on vulgar. And now having watched him more, I don't think it's all about the seamy underbelly of the jet set. I don't think he's entirely skewering or indicting these garish monstrosities at the subject of his films; is it fair to say that I think he actually identifies on some level with a bit of the, what many of us might assess to be, vapid glitz? He feels just as at home with the high-flown as much as the unpretentious. He vacillates from resistance to and embrace of these two clashing extremes. Like any good artist he's a bit of a walking contradiction, a self-negating mentality dominates his films, and this discrepancy produces some truly interesting, preposterously good works meditating on refined ugliness that are just as stilted, just as magniloquent..sometimes bloated, as they are incisive; cutting no doubt to the quick in all its starkness. Brash you could call him, and not one to tiptoe around class warfare. It's of course no coincidence that he often picks the incongruity of the genteel Victorian era [and the opposing flotsam of society] to canvas tasteful 'filth'. The result is a very different film each time. No film - or few - is etched in the same rhythms. They're mental exercises divested of complete linearity a fair portion of the time. He rigorously follows conventions of aesthetic beauty in one sense and then bends them. You can tell he takes painstaking measures to assert that no film is alike - I can tell, and I praise that. Often the movies will have some otherworldly Nicolas Roeg-worthy pacing with an ambiguous stew of tonalities that I'm not sure you can altogether call surreal anymore, because that term has worn out its welcome. He usually hits all the right notes, to me. He's an uneven director. But a great one, as I see it. One that can't be overlooked. Each of his films are so suffused with his DNA that you can't not be at least intrigued by the imprint on the sums of its parts. Somewhere, he is situated on some elevated plane of madness that shouldn't be addressed too exigently, as we'd lose someone touched in the head for the greater service of art, you see. Peter Greenaway is at his best when he is at his worst if that makes any sense. When he does not glad-hand the viewer with subtext too viciously spelt out he is on fire.
I'm in awe of Greenaway's talents as a director. His cinema is so original in comparison to anything else out there. I do not care for all of his films, but the ones I do appreciate, I really, really admire.
Love Peter Greenaway , his films have heavily influenced my painting .
a river of detritus with odd diamonds - love his films
Partially for personal reasons...the particular point I was at in my life...seeing The Draughtman's Contract remains my favourite film and has affected my aethetics, preferences in narrative and sense of humour permanently.
The Screen on the Hill at Belsize Park is fixed point in my firmament.
It's interesting because modern film sadly isn't about seeing something new, rather it's about seeing something visualized that you have already seen, heard, read. Even the greats as Kubrick, Tarkovsky etc etc use books as their source material, I think what people crave is narrative, not visual stimuli there are plenty of "experimental" films that are pure visuals, and those aren't going to entertain someone for 3 hours.
I do believe what he says has merit though I think people get stuck way to hard on traditional narrative structure and it ends up really limiting the types of storys and visuals you can use
You raise a good point - I think of modern day commercials - which do have some textual basis but are overall much more imagistic than narrative films. But nobody really remembers commercials - so it seems a greater context is needed for images to shine and that context seems to be narrative.
I feel so grateful to film-makers like Greenaway, or Tarkovsky, or Bergman for pushing the medium in directions not normally explored by mainstream Hollywood, for instance. Film is a relatively young medium and as such still very malleable (or should be). Why always linear narratives? Why always explanatory dialogue or voice-over's? Trust (or educate) your audience, film-makers!! Do we always (immediately or at all) "understand" every work of art we experience? Of course not, so why should film be any different!?!
People are taught that if they are not told meaning then there must be none. It's quite sad actually.
Greenaway tought us one amazing way to understand films, but he is not obsessed by the idea to understand a movie completly. Therefore I'm grateful that artists like Tarkowski, Greenaway, Almodóvar, Hosokawa, Hitchcock and the unforgotten Pina Bausch from Wuppertal Dance Théâtre influenced my way of thinking, self-awareness and reflection a lot. The "Greenaway" episode in my life was just the moment, when I decided to study chemistry, not art history. I'm quite worried about the uncertain future of small cinemas in the SarsCov Crisis, about the influence of mainstream Hollywood and Bollywood, and moreover about the way Netflix is concepting new films based only on economic success, to fulfill the "obvious" expectations of the audience. The level of physical violence, horror and bizarre stunts in so-called "Block Busters" is disgusting and far from real, far from Vilsmaier. My recommendation is 16 y.o. Grace Vanderwaal, not the Disney movie, but her music and poetry, she went on headline tour with her band and her dog at the age of 13, she's at least as funny and inspiring as literature nobel price winner Elfriede Jelinek.
in these days where movies are all remakes/interpretations of existing stories i need more beautiful visuals
👏👏👏
Representation.
Excuse the mound of text:
Greenaway - and I'm only speaking to his
films here - has always seemed to have this sort of tug and pull dichotomy between high society/high art and paradoxically the most banal, base aspects of culture, society, etc. He teeters somehow on a complex mirage of artifice and utterly stripped down, [poetically] simplistic, brutal frankness (often in a hellish inversion of British gentility, par for the satire) skewing on vulgar. And now having watched him more, I don't think it's all about the seamy underbelly of the jet set. I don't think he's entirely skewering or indicting these garish monstrosities at the subject of his films; is it fair to say that I think he actually identifies on some level with a bit of the, what many of us might assess to be, vapid glitz? He feels just as at home with the high-flown as much as the unpretentious. He vacillates from resistance to and embrace of these two clashing extremes. Like any good artist he's a bit of a walking contradiction, a self-negating mentality dominates his films, and this discrepancy produces some truly interesting, preposterously good works meditating on refined ugliness that are just as stilted, just as magniloquent..sometimes bloated, as they are incisive; cutting no doubt to the quick in all its starkness.
Brash you could call him, and not one to tiptoe around class warfare. It's of course no coincidence that he often picks the incongruity of the genteel Victorian era [and the opposing flotsam of society] to canvas tasteful 'filth'. The result is a very different film each time. No film - or few - is etched in the same rhythms. They're mental exercises divested of complete linearity a fair portion of the time. He rigorously follows conventions of aesthetic beauty in one sense and then bends them. You can tell he takes painstaking measures to assert that no film is alike - I can tell, and I praise that. Often the movies will have some otherworldly Nicolas Roeg-worthy pacing with an ambiguous stew of tonalities that I'm not sure you can altogether call surreal anymore, because that term has worn out its welcome. He usually hits all the right notes, to me. He's an uneven director. But a great one, as I see it. One that can't be overlooked. Each of his films are so suffused with his DNA that you can't not be at least intrigued by the imprint on the sums of its parts.
Somewhere, he is situated on some elevated plane of madness that shouldn't be addressed too exigently, as we'd lose someone touched in the head for the greater service of art, you see. Peter Greenaway is at his best when he is at his worst if that makes any sense. When he does not glad-hand the viewer with subtext too viciously spelt out he is on fire.
Wonderful
The Two Jakes | Prisoners of the Past, petrol climate change putin & trump