Drowning by Numbers

One woman in three bodies. Games about death, with death as a rule, and as a consequence. Life as this game and vice versa. The scoring of the game, the ruling of the script according to numbers. Sequential skipping through the numbers as a way of adumbrating the game to tell a story.

Another masterpiece from Greenaway, his most accessible in my view. But that makes it a lesser work compared to his others, because the story is perfectly comprehensible. One can see how his notion of structured visual allegory with narrative footnotes starts to emerge here. The latest I have seen at this writing is The Pillow Book where this is all so much more elaborate and integrated into the narrative. But this film still charms. I wish I could personally thank the financier.

I saw the movie at a local art-house cinema, and was instantly converted to the church of Greenaway/Nyman. I raved so much about it that my philestine friends finally agreed to rent it.

Of course, the rented version was pan-n-scanned. It was truly awful. As bad as the original was good. Much of the Greenawaynian charm is his flair for composing scenes visually. Pan-scanning deprives you of almost all the fun. Besides whoever did the pan scanning didn't get the spot-the-numbers game. Several were lost out of frame.

Don't bother renting it on VHS. Maybe the DVD will get it right. Until then, ask the Brattle or your local cinema paradiso to show you it in all its glory.

Drowning By Numbers is one of a very small group of perfect films I've seen. Not just 5, 10, 100 point films, but flawless to the point where numerical systems fail to be valuable. Peter Greenaway's third film is about three women a mother, daughter, and niece all named Cissie Colpitts, who one by one drown their husbands in a bath, in the sea, and in a pool. After the first drowning, the local coroner is asked to help cover up the crime, and he agrees believing this will give him car blanche to have his way with the new widow. He is rebuked in the first of several such attempts. His name is Madgett and he orchestrates for the town a series of seemingly random, perhaps ancient (in fact completely made up) games, consisting of strange rules and regulations, like "Hangman's Cricket" where half the game is spent learning the rules. Madgett's son is named Smut(our narrator), and Smut is interested in a young girl dressed in a fancy gown who always claims to be on her way to a party, and who jumps rope counting from 1 to 100 in the films opening sequence. Numbers appear in every scene whether spoken aloud or written on a small or large object in the background. One could make the film itself into a game called "spot the numbers", which count from the first scene to the last from 1 to 100. The film is full of small details some so obscure they are likely to please no one but Peter Greenaway or those willing to watch his behind the scenes blow-by blow "Fear Of Drowning", where for instance, we learn that many lines of dialog consist of the last words of England's kings, sometimes crazed non-sequitters muttered from their death beds. Why include such things, because it makes the game for fun, that's why. As always Greenaway composes every single sequence to achieve a sense of balance, and painterly poise. As usual most scenes, including idle landscape shots are recreations of paintings. Though the images are fantastic, the soundtrack by frequent collaborator Michael Nyman is stunning. I can't think of a director and composer whose works fuse together with such iconoclastic fluid grace since Sergio Leone and Ennio Mariconne. Nyyman's orchestral compositions are energetic, pulsating, lively, and captivating enough to be listened to and enjoyed apart from the film as its own music, and gives a sharp sense of irony and comic timing of its own to Greenaway's visual tableaux. Greenaway is not what you would call a "humanist" director, he rarely shoots close ups, instead remains in wide screen, and letting his characters take up positions as figures in an image, not actors on a stage, or in a film. This can be difficult to deal with if identification with characters is a pre-requisite for enjoyment, because the film aims for visual awe, wafts of aural pleasure, and snatches of witty literate dialog that only doesn't sound like dialog because of the casual delivery the lead actresses are able to give their macabre melodrama. Drowning By Numbers is a multi-layered film meant to be watched several times.

It is a monument to be marveled at, but one where all of the elements of the film medium contribute the structure and design of the piece as whole, where form and content perfectly integrated into each other. The women who drown their husbands, at first do it out of anger, then out of disappointment, and finally out of "solidarity", or in other words for no real reason at all. The pattern of threes needs to be complete, three murders, three autopsies, and three funerals. We know the husbands will die, they are as inexorably fated to their turns in the plot as all people are fated for death, as films are fated to end after a certain number of scenes. We are made hyper-aware of these numbers because they are flashed in a countdown on screen. Does anyone remember the death clock, http://www.deathclock.com/, how it works is after a few personal details are typed in a clock appears counting down to the exact moment you will die. You can watch your life flicker away by measurements. We are all drowning in numbers. Yet it's not all doom and gloom, because the coroner while being an eternal bachelor as fated to be rejected by the widows he assists as their husbands were to watery graves, he is also the master of games. Like his first film the Draughtsman's' Contract the battle of the sexes consumes the characters, where in Draughtsman, an artist who believes he is having his way with a mother and daughter discovers all to late, he is in fact being used and disposed of, so does Madgett find himself helpless in the face of "female solidarity", leaving him to his only recourse of playing more games. Sure death is just around the corner at all times, but there are so many marvelous, silly, frivolous distractions to amuse ourselves with in the meantime; life and all of its contents. "No Country For Old Men" and Blow-Up have both made this same point about death's inevitability and life as a game of chance, but where both those films suffered a self-serious somberness Drowning By Numbers remembers to be a tragic-comedy and not just a tragedy. Life is absurd, of course of course, but the absurd can be very funny, and humor after all is happiness' cheeky cousin, sometimes inappropriate, but nearly always welcome. Smut: "The full flavor of the game Hangman's Cricket is best appreciated after the game has been played for several hours, by then every player has an understanding of the many rules and knows which character they want to play permanently, finally an outright loser is found and is obliged to present himself to the Hangman who is always merciless".

In "Drowning by Numbers" Peter Greenaway managed to find the thin line between the art movies and the audience-pleasing comedies. His other films, like "The Draughtsman's Contract" are visually arresting but very hard to understand and to stay with. I worried a little bit before I sat down watching this film but I spent a cheerful evening in front of the TV. Hilarious dialogues and monologues are matched with Sacha Vierny's beautiful photography and Greenaway's distinctive and moody sets and atmosphere. Plowright, Stevenson and Richardson are equally terrific, not to mention Bernard Hill as the corny coroner. The debuting Jason Edwards is one of the highlights of the film. His strange behaviour and explanations of the newly invented games are the funniest moments in the film. The final scene is one of the most bizarre closing ever put on screen. Unfortunately, this film was faded by the other commercially successful English films of the late 80s, early 90s (e.g. The Fish Called: Wanda), but if you have the opportunity to watch this film don't miss it. It's highly recommended.

Such an obviously non-American film. I believe this was the first time I had seen Joan Plowright, and she was so good. Having seen more of her work since, I know this is no fluke. Everyone else was also good here, especially Joely Richardson and Bernard Hill. I won't go into any detail, but the movie is weird, weird, weird, and has a dark subject matter without being a dark film. Highly recommended for those looking for something different. Grade: A