User reviews

If you're wondering whether or not to become an art historian, watch this film to help you make the decision. You will either be inspired or realize that art history is not for you. Greenaway examines Rembrandt's painting to such an intense degree that it can seem ludicrous or amazingly astute. He identifies 34 so-called Mysteries about the painting and explains his theories about these mysteries.

I personally found many of his theories far-fetched but was fascinated that someone would go the extent that he went in analyzing a single painting.

This film is unexpectedly amazing. Superbly written, acted and directed. The music is excellent too. The few viewers in my cinema screening were so affected nobody even moved from their seat until all credits rolled and the screen went completely black.

I share Greenaway's fascination with the the Icarus and Daedalus flight myth, thew way they have been portrayed in art, and heartily recommend the print monographs he has done on that topic. Greenaway takes us full off the rails with J'Accuse. It is all his visual interpretation skills applied to what maybe an insane and paranoid conspiracy theory, or an intentional puzzle left for us by the genius of Rembrandt. is he right or wrong? Take your pick. Are we delving into the hidden mind of Rembrandt, or solely into Greenaways point of view? In the end it doesn't matter. It is the journey Greenaway takes us though, which is undeniably exquisite.

He has his big fascination for the 1600s and his movies have many times been composed like a painting from the time. Both the arrangement of actors, the light and the color.

This time Greenaway seems to have taken the full consequences of it and presents the story behind Rembrandt's "Nightwatching" as some kind of detective plot. Cynical, brutal of course and with lots of naked bodies.

But there's mannerism in it now and letting the actors use a body language and way of talking like it was today, has this time stopped functioning. Greenaway is now in desperate need of renewing his arrangements, his lights and his colors. We are slowly having enough.

Greenaway's documentary companion piece to NIGHTWATCHING, and it shares the same problems. Some parts are very interesting, others throw far too much information at you at once, making it exceedingly hard to follow what Greenaway is getting at. There are also several inferences and leaps of logic that seem like "stretching it" to say the least, but I suppose that's part of critical analysis. While it's extremely impressive that Greenaway has put so much thought, time and effort into interpreting a single work of art, he doesn't succeed in making his obsession contagious.

5/10