Rembrandt's J'accuse

The insistence among the intellectually minded on finding all sorts of 'meanings' in art can reek of insecurity as it's often a sign of disconnect from the aesthetic/sensual part of life, but Greenaway eschews the trendy political readings of the day to explore a highly speculative account of Nightwatch that is certainly entertaining, if not always convincing. His mixed media approach remains rather drab, but he is an engaging narrator that could read out a phone book and still be compelling.

Greenaway is a great narrator and carries the documentary with his voice and phrasing alone. Add to this his still in tact talent for extraordinary filmmaking, including fragments from "Nightwatching" that work much better here than in their original context, and a wonderful musical score; and you have a near perfect documentary. As far as the subject matter itself is concerned: se non è vero, è ben trovato.

A lot of fun if you like Mystery.

Shares the same problems as Nightwatching. Some parts are very interesting, others throw far too much information at you at once, making it exceedingly hard to follow. There are also several inferences and leaps of logic that seem like "stretching it" to say the least, but I suppose that's part of critical analysis. While it's extremely impressive that Greenaway has put so much thought, time and effort into interpreting a single work of art, he doesn't succeed in making his obsession contagious.

delicious deconstruction.

"This immersive tour of the mortal manipulations fueling Europe's 17th-century cultural capital supplies wit and intellect while it starves the emotions." - Bill Weber

Greenaway's pronouncements about our "visual illiteracy" feel a bit pompous, especially when he essentially goes on to reduce Rembrandt's painting to a gimmicky puzzle (more or less assuming it operates the same way as his films do). The whole thing has more than a little whiff of Ruiz's Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting about it, but less artfully done. Not one of Greenaway's stronger works.