Ronda Noturna

Briefly, the plot of Nightwatching is about Rembrandt's uncovering of a conspiracy during his painting of his most famous work the Night Watch. Just as importantly it's about the three loves of his life.

I've tried to review this film in the context of Peter Greenaway's directing career as it's pretty critical to my appreciation. As much an artwork as any film itself, with a director who has had a long career, is how all the artworks come together as a ghost of their creator. The power of women over men is something that Greenaway has always reflected on in his films, and in that context Nightwatching represents a mellowing of his gaze. Always fascinated by women destroying men or cuckolding them in some way, Greenaway has made a film where the central character of the painter Rembrandt lives amongst women, and whilst often bewildering to him, they are companions. There are remnants of the past style at the beginning of the movie where during a family meal all the women in the room chant together, "Contemporary women are permitted to smoke, write, correspond with Descartes, wear spectacles, insult the Pope, and breast-feed babies.". The result here is charming as opposed to alarming. A far cry from "Deadman's Catch" in Drowning By Numbers (1988), a catching game where players are successively handicapped for missing catches, and finally wrapped in a winding sheet (traditionally used for corpses) when they lose. The women escape unscathed, perfect catchers, people that exist in some sort of harmony with life, who can find a place and a rhythm. In Nightwatching women still have that rhythm but they don't end up murdering their husbands! On the other hand Rembrandt does have to defend Hendrikje Stoffels from the advances of the callow and the licentious, and women, though with this rhythm are victims of men rather than succubi.

Another echo is a reference to cuckoldry, when Rembrandt discourses on how Potiphar was a cuckold who, "...slept with young men in order to avoid the temptation of his wife trying to screw Joseph". Apparently the Jewish tradition relating to Potiphar related in the Talmud, is that Potiphar bought Joseph as a catamite. Rembrandt learnt this from a rabbi friend of his, an interesting fact in a very well researched movie.

I've seen many Rembrandt drawings and paintings in museums, but I never knew that he had actually produced a small number of erotic works, which is something that Greenaway draws out in his extremely ribald Rembrandt. A fierce critic of Rembrandt, Andries Pel, who despised Rembrandt's realism, in 1681 wrote of his females nudes, "...the traces of the lacings of the corsets on the stomach, of the garters on the legs must be visible if nature was to get her due.". Rembrandt's fascination with this sort of thing is again picked up on by Greenaway.

When I went to the Rijkmuseum in Amsterdam and stood in front of the Night Watch, I very much felt that the men in the painting were poseurs and dandies and that I had no interest in the painting because of this. That though was precisely Rembrandt's point, and Greenaway really helped to bring the painting and much of his other work alive. Something that Greenaway has said about this film is that Amsterdam for a time in the 1640s was a place of unregulated wealth gathering by a handful of civil dynasties, similar to modern Russia.

I felt that in line with what I'm saying about mellowing and maturity, the choice of composer Giovanni Solamar, who is far less famous than frequent collaborator Michael Nyman, follows along the same trajectory, the music is far less flashy, but somehow full of confusion and elegiac tones, more consistent with a film from an older and wiser filmmaker.

I felt that I could connect with Rembrandt's grief at the death of his wife Saskia, and that there was something quite special about that. Despite the fact that Greenaway manages to build scarce suspense around the uncovering of the treachery that Rembrandt seeks to expose, I think it's a film that I will remember forever, with several, to my mind, iconic scenes. I think it helped immensely in my taking in of the film that Martin Freeman looks so much like Rembrandt, especially with the care and attention the hairdressers heaped upon him, something that's quite critical when you have a man so famous for self-portraiture.

Nightwatching (2007)

Highly original, deliberately false, playing loose with fact, frankly sexual, and dry and cold. And not very interesting.

It's fair to say very few people will like this movie, even among those inclined to watch it in the first place, even among fans of the director Peter Greenaway. Luckily, there will be those few who will find it so stylized, startling, offbeat, and intense as to love it. It does suggest something brilliant in the pretty murk it also is. And the actors are performing their hearts out, every one of them pushing their emotional limits within the crisp, dry set designs, which are stiff, symmetrical, and stagey. And beautiful.

There is no question this is an "art" film, highly controlled and aesthetic head to toe. The photography has a kind of studio controlled fluidity, not the moving camera of a steadicam or classic Hollywood, but a steady, slow tracking horizontally inward or sliding sideways. This helps keep the scenes alive, a little, but it also adds to the drone of the whole, since the movement is nearly always the same. In a way, the camera is in synch with the sets, which are also similar in scale and proportion throughout, and symmetrical.

What's it about? Rembrandt and his two wives and one known lover (all compressed into one invented time frame). That's not bad material for a movie, but there is also the political intrigue that Greenaway inserts, a confusing and dull affair with vain attempts to mimic (I think) the drama of the Da Vinci code (the book, not the movie). "Nightwatching" has almost a second plot which comes out of a fantastical reinterpretation of the most monumental of Rembrandt's paintings, "Nightwatch." Greenaway as both writer and director became convinced (or at least wanted to create that impression) that a conspiracy was built into the symbolism of the painting, even a murder. (A second disc in the deluxe DVD edition has a documentary exploring this.) It might have worked, but it's just poorly constructed and the writing is willfully obtuse. amidst the larger sexual and social threads of the main plot, this other idea is an intrusion.

What is missing almost completely in this 2 ¼ hour is any sense of Rembrandt the painter. His personality, his personal life, his apparent rebelliousness are all evident, but the artist, and the art, is missing. The one thing this obsession leads to is some crisp photography of the one painting, and though the shots go by too fast, it's revealing to see up close Rembrandt's rough style, which was more and more at odds with the Dutch tendency for detail (a direction Vermeer typifies a couple decades later).

For people familiar with contemporary theater, this is it on film. It looks great and has passion. But it's just not very interesting. The writing is strained, and the ideas thin. Most of all, it's indulgent. A lot of talent squandered.

Once again, Peter Greenaway has created a film that holds your attention, and tells a story in a very captivating way.

What I found most ironic, and what really bowled me over, was how "unexperimental" this film seemed. After his recent directorial forays ("8 1/2 Women" and the "Tulse Luper Suitcases" come to mind), "Nightwatching" will seem unexpectedly boring in comparison. One might anticipate a visual spectacle, an overwhelming of the senses as seems to be Greenaway's modus operandi. The real richness of "Nightwatching" is in the little things, the simplest of details, and the pure joy of watching a master working within a more traditional cinematic framework.

When I think of the impact "Nightwatching" had on me initially, I am reminded of a similar experience when I recently viewed Lars Von Trier's "Antichrist". I was rather caught off-guard by "Antichrist's" lack of overt experimentation. But as someone who appreciates subtlety and nuance in film, I felt my time was well-spent. Plus, there's nothing I like more than walking away feeling as if I haven't been spoon-fed a story, that I've been allowed to use my BRAIN, and fill in the blanks a bit as the story moves along.

I find it doubly ironic that this film was released internationally in 2007, and only recently released domestically in the US (2010), and to lukewarm reviews at best. Greenaway is an artist never to be underestimated, and I implore you to give this film your utmost attention. It's also kinda cool to see Greenaway "geek out" a bit -- he's so obsessed with Remembrandt and all things Dutch, enjoy!

My advice is to first watch 'Rembrandt's J'Accuse', Greenaway's companion film. It fills you in on the background, the characters, the thesis for the conspiracy, and generally sets the scene for 'Nightwatching' itself, which is extremely elaborate and requires a far more prolonged degree of concentration than 99.9% of films being released. Having said that, the film certainly stands alone as a powerful and intelligent piece of cinema that puts forward a contentious and challenging theory about the circumstances surrounding Rembrandt's painting.

Some viewers have pointed out how moving the film is - and indeed it is. But I for one have found ALL of Greenaway's films to be deeply moving. Unlike mainstream directors, he doesn't attempt to tug at the heartstrings, but instead deploys one rich, elegaic, achingly beautiful set piece after another, letting the ideas and associations reach the emotions of the audience. In Greenaway's world, extreme beauty and extreme horror exist cheek-by-jowl - his heroes (more so than his heroines) look for logic and order, and find ultimately chaos and decay - the good go unrewarded, the bad go unpunished - and yet, out of it all, rises a triumphant celebration of life, art, human aspiration, and the possibilities of cinema itself.

If you want a bedtime story about goodies overcoming baddies, look elsewhere. 'Nightwatching', like Greenaway's other work, offers - and demands - much more than that.

I'm really amazed with the work Peter Greenaway did in this movie. I have seen most of his films and this one is now my favourite. It's impressive the way the made every frame a moving Rembrandt's painting. This is pure art cinema. The story is told in a creative way, you can understand the clever mind of Rembrandt, follow his steps in his life focused on his most famous painting "The Night Watch", it could be a "slow" movie but the way "Rembrandt" tells the story makes it smooth; dramatic, funny, and smart. I could frame this movie on a museum. The "Holland" world is perfectly shown, the costume design is superb; every single detail in the movie takes you to 1642. To appreciate this movie you must know who Peter Greenaway is and understand why "cinema" is the 7th art.