Reviews

In October 1991, I was at the premiere screening of Greenaway's Prospero's Books in Berlin, with the director giving a speech and Q&A after the film. Mr. Greenaway repeated his by now famous claim, that cinema had all to be reinvented, because it would hang behind its possibilities of artistical expression and imagination. That's quite a thing to say. And almost naturally, by coincidence, he proposed (to) himself as the agent of that revolution.

The Draughtman's Contract was Greenaway's first attempt to put that posture into action. So it bears all his signature features: tricky plot, highly sophisticated dialogue, well-crafted photography with intense reference to art history, repetitive music. Michael Nyman's score, agressively bugging, is poured over the film's fine photography like thick gravy. Compare it to Barry Lyndon, and you know how non-musical Greenaway is. His camera "invention" is the 90 degrees tracking shot, to and fro, and again, and again, but unfortunately without sense and sensibility. It taints the good still photography of the rest of the film. But hey, he is reinventing! The story permanently borders to sadism, with characters that sell out themselves to the vanity of an inexplicably almighty draughtsman - you could call Greenaway the Tarrantino of the educated classes.

Art reigns over all until the end, when the secret plan is revealed and the artist's sadistic killing in three steps turns everything upside down: without eyes (vision) and without (the emperor's) clothes (invention, progress), he is useless and may as well be killed. I doubt, that Mr. Greenaway is that self-critical and ironic, to see that ending as a comment on his own goals. His realm is vain swaggering of scholarship.

One star for camera and editing, one for the acting of Anne-Louise Lambert and Anthony Higgins.

The film is a raw sequence of supposedly funny ideas, with a lot of "Hangover"- humour and many loose ends, not being told - four people were writing on the script. The editing creates a fragmented atmosphere, making it hard for the viewer to get into the film. The plot about a guy, who seeks sweet revenge on his three former best friends who let him down some decades ago, by inviting them to "his" house in Southern France, is inconsistent and ridiculous. The figures lack depth, they don't need it because the plot is sheer background for the recurring, personal issues of the director - glorification of drugs, orgies, anal intercourse, satanism. In his former movie "Schwarze Schafe" he took these ingredients to form a wonderful genre picture of Berlin. Now he is shagging his issues to death. Like in Sorrentino's "La Grande Bellezza", you get the impression, the film is about the director's crisis. The very good acting of the lead figures (Wagner, Finzi, Böwe, Hosemann) cannot save a bad plot and bad directing.

The film wants to tell the feasibility of free love in a shared house, concurrent with the sexual evolution of a 14 year old girl. Big fail. The camera is constantly showing the girl's face, the face and again the face, to the degree of of boredom or revulsion; for no reason fathomable. Maybe because for the lack of better options, or the director fell in love with her (didn't they also promote sex with children back then?). The girl wants to get rid of her virginity and decides to get shagged like a peace of meat, worse than in a porn movie. No problem for her. Why? Because she learned, that to love means also to suffer. Where did she learn that from? Her parents just separated, because the father wants to shag the younger edition of his wife. The younger being his student, admiring him for some reason, that the film isn't able to describe. The father always looks grumpy, because of stress, too much alcohol, too many women, life in general, or some other reason, not mentioned in the film. The wife, in a desperate attempt to win her husband back, agrees the mistress joining the happy commune. So she loses her mind, her job and her house, because so sweet an oh so smart daughter knows that love flows like a river - her boyfriend's sex skills had improved in the meantime - and convinces mummy to move out. The rest of the people in the group agree, because there is no way to deny the new couple their love. It doesn't get any more superficial than that. Like the director, they all seem to have the emotional maturity of teenagers.

After watching this film and reading the NPR interview with WA afterwards (see user nazztrader's review), I knew, that I will never again spend a ticket to see a WA film. From the video rental shop or on the internet, it's fine! Because Mr. Allen is not only getting clunky but way too bigoted. He does not need any viewer's money. Read, how he bloats about being too middle classy and not crazy enough to do a good film anymore.

Joaquin Phoenix and Emma Stone teased me to see the film, but their acting stayed poor, just good enough.

WA seems to have given up being a good director. Maybe his production constraints limit the schedule too, TV-wise. Well, he said it in that interview, that he prefers to be home and to have dinner in time instead of working too much.

Worse was the constant babbling of that narrator, that moral voice, which was later transferred to Emma, preparing the terrible ending of the film. Allen is constructing a character, that all of a sudden encounters its qualms for some untold reason. It seemed to me like he is fantasizing about the character's purity, untainted in youth, that must be kept to the writers property.

Allen is more and more unable, to give his films a proper ending. That's coherent, being his age. He's beginning to see the wall ("it's an expression").

After his so brilliant early works, and sometimes wonderful pieces in the middle (Deconstucting Harry being the last piece of mastery), he is more and more making a fool of himself.

At least, it's good to know, that making films keeps WA alive.

The basic approach of the film is interesting: the basement as the place of secrets, of things, that are not acted out, even of the unconscious. Well, Mr. Seidl was born in Vienna after all.

But what he offers is a rather bulky version of Freudian patterns. Mr. Seidl's choice of people, that foster their hobbies in their basements tells more about himself than his exhibits. From a universe of people and their interests, he is very keen on absurd sex, compulsiveness, with guns, puppets and politics, and more absurd sex. His sex thing makes him break the basic requirement of the film, as he interviews one of his exhibits extensively in her flat. Did I mention absurd sex?

Right from the start, he makes it clear, that the people he shows are his material to expose the character of his fellow Austrians. For Mr. Seidl, it is all still 1933, with a scent of anal plugs. His images are very artificial, like simulated. Humour is absent an joy comes by mistake, with heavy drinking. His exhibits look like persuaded in showing it all.

It wouldn't be that bad, if he would treat his protagonists friendly, like human beings. But his view upon them is cold, almost sadistic. There, he proves to be a follower of the Haneke school. The basement becomes a societal residue for low lives. Do expect a lot of revulsion, this is a pornographic documentary, not a documentary porn movie.

In the American view, this may be inspirational for Tarrantino, in the European one, it shows, that the people that still suffer the most by psychoanalysis and the Third Reich, are some directors, who try to capitalize on this - the Bernhards, Jelineks, Hanekes and Seidls of this world. No need to suffer with them.