British director Peter Greenaway was very popular among European university students in the late 1980s and early 1990s. His painterly style paired with Michael Nyman's minimalistic neo-baroque music yielded some of the most unique and interesting art films of the period (The Draughtsman's Contract; The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover; Prospero's Books etc.). Drowning by Numbers is my favourite and has remained in my all-time Top 20 ever since.
It is probably Greenaway's least bizarre and most accessible work and the one that strays furthest from being another moving baroque painting, but it is just as highly structured and densely infused with statistics-like enumerations (another common trait of Greenaway's movies). Numbers, repetition, symmetry and surreal, invented nursery games create an intricate web in which the story of three women drowning their husbands unfolds. Joan Plowright and Bernard Hill give memorable performances here (as usual), but a Greenaway movie is never really about story or performances, but puzzles, imaginative structuring and an eye-opening, fresh perspective on people's motives and dark secrets.
Being one of the most unusual filmmakers, Greenaway should not be overlooked, and Drowning by Numbers is a perfect initiation into his world. It might not be as shocking and powerful as The Baby of Macon, but it is just as gripping and, for a Greenaway movie, surprisingly funny and warm.
It is probably Greenaway's least bizarre and most accessible work and the one that strays furthest from being another moving baroque painting, but it is just as highly structured and densely infused with statistics-like enumerations (another common trait of Greenaway's movies). Numbers, repetition, symmetry and surreal, invented nursery games create an intricate web in which the story of three women drowning their husbands unfolds. Joan Plowright and Bernard Hill give memorable performances here (as usual), but a Greenaway movie is never really about story or performances, but puzzles, imaginative structuring and an eye-opening, fresh perspective on people's motives and dark secrets.
Being one of the most unusual filmmakers, Greenaway should not be overlooked, and Drowning by Numbers is a perfect initiation into his world. It might not be as shocking and powerful as The Baby of Macon, but it is just as gripping and, for a Greenaway movie, surprisingly funny and warm.