The Baby of Mâcon

THE BABY OF MACON is Peter Greenaway's most disturbing and shocking film yet. It's about a baby born of a deformed woman in a disease ridden village. The villagers go berserk due to the fact that the mother is so grossly deformed, and soon a different woman claims the baby as her own and pretends that she is still a virgin to gain the town's approval!!!

Her parents detest, so she locks them up. She tries to seduce a man that she is in love with, but the man is killed by the baby in the process. What occurs afterward is nothing short of horrifying. I'll just say that some truly disgusting events transpire, and the film ends in a hollow and empty climax.

I felt that the film was effective in demonstrating it's views and certainly was grueling, but the appeal of the film is what makes it so hard to really review. Who on earth would want to watch this? People who want to see a good movie maybe, but they will no doubt be put off by the subject matter. Fans of independent cinema will probably appreciate it, but most likely won't rush to see it.

Everyone else will probably not find much appeal in this kind of storytelling. But that's kind of what's so cool about Greenaway. He is able to create film in a way that most cannot. He's in a class of Chaotic cinema where any sort of personification is possible and signature themes are easier to put to light than a real story. I found the film moving, but unless your a big fan of set design, I'm going to have to recommend it to Greenaway fans only.

Easily eclipsing The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover as Greenaway's masterpiece. Ormond and Fiennes have never been better. Makes the other films released that year (The Firm, Sleepless in Seattle) look like lukewarm consomme at a spinsterish teaparty. Most powerful and horrifying rape scene since Bergman's The Virgin Spring. Surprised the Christian Coalition hasn't tried to get it banned: full frontal male nudity, infanticide, gang rape. What blood-and-thunder Elizabethan melodrama is all about.

Oh, the humanity! I have deep admiration for the man that is Greenaway. The Baby of Macon is a masterwork that is really above criticism. The imdb reviews are pretty much what I would expect from people who live by the credo "ignorance is bliss". They are shocked. They are apalled. They are horrified. How can this film be viewed as anything less than indulgent maniacal trash, they say.

Well, of course, they must be correct. After all, with all the nudity and curt cursed characters who exist in a red world of servants and oblivious royalty embroiled in seemingly pointless situations.....

Huh?

To sum up, come to Greenaway when you're ready for him. He is so far ahead of modern cinema that he'll be dead 60 years before people start to call him the greatest filmmaker of all-time.

And the nudity? All you "appalled" juveniles are just upset that it is unerotic. You sick perverts.

This is an astonishing Fiction-Within-Fiction exercise that ingeniously implicates the viewer in the appalling acts of violence on screen. Thus, it is one of the most visceral and sickening movies ever made, but of the highest moral and artistic integrity.

Don't miss it. If you can handle it...

This film was shown at the Cannes film festival nearly a decade ago and apparently received more walkouts than any film in the festival's history--and "Wild at Heart" won the grand prize here?

Unlike most films that use sex and violence to help sell them, Greenaway seems to have no interest in "selling". The story he tells--which takes the form of a play attended by royalty and commonfolk alike--is a Shakespearian fable regarding a young woman (Julia Ormond) who uses her disfigured mother's newborn as a messiah-like figure to gain wealth and comfort, much to the dismay of the church (repped by Ralph Fiennes).

To say that the writer/director of this film is a sick person because of what happens in the story is shortsighted, at best. Yes, there are truly heinous atrocities committed by some of these characters--but the manner in which it is depicted does nothing to suggest glamour or vicarious thrills. David Lynch's Golden Palm winner, on the other hand, is full of all manner of freaks and malicious acts played mostly for laughs. Greenaway definitely got the soiled end of the stick on this one.

It's a shame, too. This film recently played for just a few nights in one of Chicago's most prominent art theaters. It's never received anything remotely close to a nationwide theatrical or video release, and it's my favorite Greenaway film, second only to "The Cook, the Thief...". If one is interested in this sort of experience and has a fairly strong stomach, I'd recommend a theatrical screening in a minute.