M Is for Man, Music, Mozart

What a man! He rewards in so many different ways. Here is one of them.

The thing that attracts me about him is his remarkably abstruse references to arcane organizing principles which are fleshed out by reference to external ideas and images. But in order to appreciate these films, you need to do your homework.

`Prospero's Books' is an example of this. It is what makes him important, but it also drives viewers away, including a significant percentage of those who pay admission.

This work is something different all together. It is all there. You just have to sit back and enjoy. Nothing profound or erudite here, just pure pleasure.

The formula seems to be to delegate large parts of the artistic endeavor, and stitch them together with a mastery of visual presentation. The music is wonderfully, accessibly composed and performed, not as his normal collaborator Nyman would have it. But the dance! Lovely. That's the core, turning this over to people who are among the best in their fields. The three dancers (all nude) evoke forces way beyond the erotic.

The filming is only superficially experimental, using Greenaway's by now trademarked overlay technique. But it is ALL in overlay so there is no simultaneous sorting out of annotative images. It is filmed for video, so the color and screen ratio don't offend in that medium. Moreover, he has apparently carefully flattened the perspective for little TeeVee screens, and the choreography exploits this trick.

The title is a puzzle. The box says `Not Mozart,' The tape says `M is for Man, Music, Mozart.' But the movements are 4: Man, Movement, Music and Mozart, and there is really no Mozart in the film. It would be characteristic of Greenaway to make a point about the empty filigree of his music compared to say the real substance of Chopin. (The Music section has listeners holding their noses while Man "learns.") But that's just speculation. The video seemed about an hour long.

It is not important (read difficult) Greenaway. But if you like dance, you'll love this little work.

Well I only just found this stuff about my work on this film. Firstly I Choreographed this in Collaboration with P.Greenaway and L.Andriessen. So its not Greenaways attempt at Choreography, however I must say he is the only Director I have worked with who kept all of the material I made (I expected it to get cut or chopped up into smaller bit's just like so many other projects I did with Film Directors, before.) When I first read the treatment all I could see was ..Pink Narcisuss..'Wild Mozartness'!!.For me the sequential line of the music that dictated the order of movement making it look like a live piece, which I think Greenaway transformed into a marvelous spectacle. I agree that to understand this work, homework it's necessary to understand the reference's. The mob (audience)...The Spectacle(Versalius amphitheater)...Alchemist gods flippantly creating the alphabet, a man and then Mozart. The accentuation of geometry within the dance but also the overtness and intended banality of it all, coupled with the ultimate idea that these phenomenal artist's are often dead before they are famous, the implications therefore on the critical mob of people who have never done it?.., Art itself.. but have the power to dictate other peoples careers. Question to the negative people; Do you think the solo dances are really that ridiculous.....? can you see the Cunningham references, also the clarity of the Balletic. Do you think this is so easily done.? It strikes me as a harsh and uninformed comment. But I guess thats the nature of the Mob! B is for Ben.

I was one of the countless ones who was very nearly ruined for new music and the visual arts by the advent of MTV. Just as avid readers hate the film versions of their favorite books, videos killed the buzz of music for me --- the video that invented itself in my head through the natural flow of the music was always infinitely better than (and unfortunately always replaced by) the video I saw on TV. And now, the "music" industry has morphed into a "writhing super model" industry where those with the most talent don't stand a chance: It's a beauty contest. Imagine my delight and surprise when I accidentally encountered this video / music / dance piece for TV, developed nearly a decade ago. I've never seen a more perfectly synthesized work for the visual arts. It combines visuals, music, and dance in a single-minded vision that seems sprung whole and phoenix-like from the spoils of our decadent popular culture. How on Earth did Greenaway and Andriessen and Craft manage to combine their extraordinary talents so seamlessly to create such a dazzling and unique and unified work of art? A work of art that lies shamelessly orthogonal to the hideous and vulgar and trite trends currently celebrated by our popular culture? My faith in the ability of man to eternally invent new expressions of beauty in life is restored.

I have resisted Greenaway's insistence on nudity for his performers almost from the beginning but he was right and I was wrong, because I was thinking in stage terms and he in visual-art terms. I misunderstood Helen Mirren exposing her amazing breasts in The Cook, Juliette Stevenson her steel-spring body in Drowning by Numbers, Joan Plowright's refusal to bare all in the same film, John Gielgud's courageous self-exposure in Propero's Books. When one performs for Greenaway, one crosses a threshold, one leaves the stage and enters the frame. I still do not know if he is a great artist but my opinion is irrelevant, he is a necessary one for our time. I salute him.

Ben: I can't begin to tell you how much I admire your work here. Your dancing, the music, and visuals all fit together in a most creative manner. I have taught film for the past 20 years, and have always presented Greenaway as one of the greatest (if not the greatest) of our time. He is so complex and abstract that many don't get it, and most don't bother to try. The drama (which is always well made in his films) is never the point. It is the feeling that we get through his creative blending of characters, visuals, and music that is always what he seems to be going for. After all, he is a painter, and approaches film from a painter's point of view, and an abstract painter at that. We can observe the quiet death of opera, ballet, and the concert hall over the 2nd half of the century, and see film take over as the leading art form to include music. This incredible ballet, of which you are so much a part, is without question one of the finest ballets of the 2nd half of the century, all the more important as it has been preserved on film. Thank you so very much for your outstanding contribution here. You are a very great artist, my friend; and like many before you, misunderstood by most.