The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 1: The Moab Story

The Moab Story is part 1 of a 3 part, 6 hour film tracing the life of the eponymous Tulse Luper and, for reasons not yet clear, the history of Uranium (atomic number 92 - this is important so pay attention at the back).

Greenaway continues to evolve his directorial style, overlapping images and sounds, embedding windows within windows, mixing media. The results are often confusing, sometimes stunning, never boring.

I wondered if Greenaway was hinting that this was in some sense an autobiographical piece. Tulse Luper is cited as the author of 'The Belly of an Architect' and in a list of his lost works appears 'The Falls', both earlier films by Greenaway.

Of course it might just be the director playing games. A clip from 'A Zed and Two Noughts' is used at one point, and there is a character named 'Cissie Colpits', the name of the three women in 'Drowning by Numbers'. I suspect there might well have been many more references to earlier films in there.

This is closer in style to 'Properos Books' or 'A TV Dante' than some of his earlier works such as 'The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover'. Narrative flow has been sacrificed in part for creating a cinematic work of art. Nothing wrong with that in my opinion though, when the result is a film like this. Sit back and let the experience wash over you.

Peter Greenaway likes drugs and attempting to differentiate his movies from others. I've seen a few of his other movies before this one and I'm really not much of a fan. I simply don't care for his style but I still respect him somewhat as he doesn't seem to care about living up to peoples expectations. He seems to have plenty of original ideas but it seems as if he never seems to care about perfecting them and bring them out in the most cockneyest of ways. With that said this (along with the whole project) to me doesn't seem much more than a concept... most of the effects (some of which have been used by Greenaway in his previous films) aren't used to their full potential but are used well enough to prove that they can. This might not be an excellent film but it certainly isn't a bad one.

I watched this several months ago at a local film festival, and to be honest it was not an enjoyable experience. To put it simply the film appears to be a giant experiment in multimedia, the type of thing a film studies phd student might envisage as being worthwhile. If you are fully aware of this before you watch the first film then you may possibly appreciate the work done, if you are looking for something enjoyable then I suggest you look elsewhere. The film oosed pretension, as if the mere act of experimentation could make up for a worthwhile film. If you are the type of watcher who enjoys say special affects rather than plot, or action rather than competent script work then this may be for you.

This is the first film that I have watched at a film festival in about ten years that I can honestly say the vast majority of the audience left the theatre in a state of bemused disgust. It was one of the least enjoyable film experiences I have ever had, right up there with Salo, and UFO: The Movie. Maybe if viewed in sequence with the other parts of the production it might have some worth, but i doubt it. At best it may serve as an educational tool to the many film schools out there...

i had read a review of this and the 92 DVDs that are part of the project-and essenetially the project itself rather than the actual film- really interested me. unfortunately only the film is available to see and even though it had a certain spirit it was mostly a struggle to watch. there are some films, where one has to give up on trying to follow a strict narrative or a plot, but rather follow the mood and the visuals and the emotion that the film evokes. "Tulse Luper" seems to be that at the get-go. i was curious and i watched patiently, but the more i watched the more it seemed the technique itself cannot be the most interesting thing going on, especially when the film is only a part 1 and I will have to wait indefinately to see a conclusion. be creative, but be lively and inventive across the border, not just in edit. i think the Pillow Book offered more to the senses and its visual style better served the story.

having said all that i still really badly want to see the project as a whole

I have three living filmmakers that I revere. Greenaway, of course, is one of them and the most obstreperous of the bunch. I like that he has real problems with making illustrated books and does something substantial out of that.

His fundamental notions of the world are built on overlapping conceptual frameworks, ordered frameworks. In this, he follows the Joycean tradition of "Finnegans Wake," which layered all sorts of frameworks from Kabbalistic, Vican, mythological, even geographic sources. It was all merged according to a dream logic — since we had no other template in that day — and used every lexical and literary device he could muster.

Where Joyce had to make do with dream-layering, our Peter gets to use already familiar web- referenced multimedia overlays. He surely knows how to use the software to extend the art of editing into new dimensions. Wow, just on that score.

And where Joyce used obtuse frameworks with the intent of his book being a life's reading, Greenaway uses obvious overlapping frameworks: numbers, his own life and the mythology from his prior films. Some categories, like the periodic table. Oddly, he hasn't been as thorough in this film as he has in some others: Vermeer's theories of light, animals, sexual stereotypes, the written word, various frameworks of introspection and reflection. Different slices on gender.

Anyway, the point is that where Joyce was esoteric, Greenaway strives to be obvious, though manylayered, even juvenile, in his frameworks. He wants these to be so simple and grand that he can stretch them to many web sites, films, CDs, games, and (I presume) books and installations. Someone can casually enter a part of the larger work and intuit the order of the thing.

Each fan of Greenaway will have to make her own decisions on what she likes in terms of the different balances he has struck. As for me, I want a tighter integration of framework and image than he has here. This is why I value his "book" films the highest.

What does this add to what we have? Sadly, not much, except an attempt to integrate himself and some of the political sweeps of the ordinary world, which he tags to nuclear control. I've often thought that the artists themselves are dumber than the art they produce and the greater distance we have from their personalities, the better.

If you have talked to Greenaway, you'll see this in a flash. He has some good headlines, having to do with the bankruptcy of narrative in film. But beyond that, his films (some of them) soar, while his own spoken narrative crawls.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.