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15 out of 20 people found the following comment useful :-
One of Greenaways best films, 26 April 2008
9/10
Author: dbborroughs from Glen Cove, New York

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Peter Greenaway's story about Rembrandt and the painting of The Nightwatch.

As a huge Greenaway fan I've been disappointed by most of Greenaways films over the last few years. Pillow Book, 8and a Half Women disappointed me. The Tulse Luper films are much better but too cerebral to fully connect to. In all honesty this is the most alive film and most "emotional" film Greenaway has made in 20 years, since Drowning by numbers.(Greenaway makes films that are intentionally not going to make you feel, he wants to make you think). This is thanks to two things, first Greenaways best writing of his career. Here is a film where people interact like real people.They talk like real people, even when they break the fourth wall, they are living breathing characters. The other reason this works is because Martin Freeman (Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead) is so good that he takes Greenaways lines and makes them real. he is of course aided and abetted by the rest of the cast, but ultimately this is a film about Freeman and he makes the most of it.

I really liked this film. I put the import DVD in to check to see how it loaded up (the menus and such are in Russian) and before I knew what was happening I was 45 minutes into the film. The film is so easy to fall into, it unlike almost anything Greenaway has done before. Its also very complex and it was clear that I was missing things. Greenaway has managed to pack the film with ideas and details many of which you can't catch on the first go through, several times I realized I missed a reference or a line earlier on...a second viewing is probably a must.

If you like Greenaway's films its a must see. Its also worth seeing if you like beautiful (it all looks like paintings) and complex films.

One of the best of Greenaway's films.

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12 out of 17 people found the following comment useful :-
Flawed but it's a start., 22 June 2008
6/10
Author: The_Black_Rider (AnglicanGallows@aol.com) from New Jersey

I've often said that Greenaway is my favorite living filmmaker. He is a true original and at least four of his feature films are outright masterpieces, especially Drowning by Numbers and A Zed & Two Noughts. That said he's gone too far up his own method in the last 20 years and his work has been less and less effective with each passing film.

Nightwatching is a step in the right direction after the hugely disappointing Tulse Luper Suitcases. All the technical elements of a Greenaway film are in place -- gorgeous lighting, minimalist music, theatrical staging, etc. -- but this time we actually have a decent story. Despite his distaste for narrative, all of Greenaway's best films have at least provided us with characters we can care about and ideas we can sink our teeth into. Here, we have an extended thesis on art theory and a depiction of Rembrandt as a haughty, passionate artist who has just as many flaws as we do. Martin Freeman's energetic and vulnerable performance is the heart and soul of the picture, holding the whole thing together.

Nightwatching is 134 minutes long but at least 20 minutes could've been cut. Plus, after Rembrandt finishes the painting, the plot has no idea where it wants to go and mostly meanders for the rest of the film. Aside from Freeman, the cast is absolutely awful. There are a few exceptions but on the whole everyone is either painfully wooden or absurdly over-the-top. Worst of all, most of the plot is revealed through the dialogue, and it's hard to focus on a complex story when the storytellers are so appalling. Finally, there is a surprising amount of profanity in this film, which is so excessive that it eventually borderlines on self-parody. Okay, people probably swore in those days, we get it. It's not edgy or groundbreaking, it's bad writing.

Still, with all its flaws, Nightwatching is the best film he's made in a very long time. While this is slightly more accessible than most Greenaway films, it will nevertheless irritate most casual film goers, so those of you expecting the average biopic should stay away. But those of you looking for a unique and visually breathtaking experience could do a lot worse than Nightwatching. I really hope it makes it to America someday.

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12 out of 18 people found the following comment useful :-
The Inner Eye and the Lover's Lens, 10 May 2008
Author: tedg (tedg@FilmsFolded.com) from Virginia Beach

In a way, Greenaway is my touchstone for deep film experience. It was with him that I first studied the things that have since become part of every viewing experience, from "Godzilla versus the Sea Monster" to the more homeopathically transcendent meditations of Medem and Ruiz.

Each film is its own adventure, and that's part of the joy. Each film is similar in reaching for a context outside of the ordinary context of other films, so it helps if you are knowledgeable about the dynamics of those contexts. Which of those that are more natural to you will color which of his films you prefer.

I like his "book" films the best because I had prewoven worlds that he just happened to encircle. All of his looping narratives and playing with discrete objects, events and relationships strung and structured capture me when they are prominent. I'm not crazy about his projects when he drifts toward conventional narrative as he does here and away from engaging in conceptual play.

This is more like "Draughtsman's Contract" or even "Cook, Thief" than his more complex films, so many people will like it. Its also his prettiest film since he lost his long time cinematographer.

If you don't know this film, its a simple fold: its about Rembrandt creating a painting with deep, Greenaway-like meaning. The filmmaker goes to great lengths to visually make his relationship to the film be similar to Rembrandt's with the painting, and thereby fold us into the thing because we see and hear (in great detail) viewers of that painting react. And they punish our painter much like the filmmaker has been.

Threaded throughout is a rather touching story — not unique in Greenaway — of a man and passion, and the woman and then women he loves. And how passion and love, and creativity encompass one another and drive that energy of life that we count on artists to use to break mountains ahead of us so we can pass.

Its the women here. It is always the lovers who allow creativity, who grow it and channel it. There is no real penetration of life without it, and the night it brings. Just on the straight narrative alone, its powerful. It works. The whole thing works, and could be a theatrical success for a wider audience than usual.

The three lovers are redheads, of course.

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

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10 out of 16 people found the following comment useful :-
New angle to everything you know about Greenway and... Rembrant?, 21 April 2008
8/10
Author: melnikovi from Netherlands

Not as visually complex as 'Prosperos' Books', not as intriguing as 'Draughtsman's Contract', not as innovative as 'The Suitcases', 'Nightwatching' is however a little of everything and, of cause, more.

There are references to the earlier films, most obviously - to the 'Contract', the latest are so strong that sometimes one may think it is a deep 'remake' of that earliest Greenways' work.

While the presentation is generally easier-going then in some previous films, it does not mean loss of depth and loads of small details (for which the film deserves a HD version - something to appear, probably, in the year 2107?). Like all Greenway films, this one to be watched many times to discover new and new layers.

The historic plot is doubtful however neither naive nor unrealistic. And most likely it is just a canvas to put the ideas on: which present in numbers.

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3 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
Peter Greenaway's best film and my favorite, 13 October 2009
10/10
Author: Galina from Virginia, USA

I love Rembrandt's work and can spend hours at the museums or galleries watching his paintings, these myriads of color brown shades, the contrast of lights and shadow that makes the faces of his models mesmerizing even if they don't have classical features, the perfect arrangement and settings of the frames that make his paintings (and drawings, and prints) cinematographic and him - a forerunner of movie making back in the 17th Century. There is warm healing energy that his paintings radiate. I admire Peter Greenaway, the true painter turned film director, the possessor of unique style, the master of exquisite frames, the creator of feasts for eyes, ears, and brains. Greenaway's decision to make a film dedicated to the Europe most outstanding Artist, his life, loves, and his most mysterious and dramatic painting, Nightwatching, proved to be the best Greenaway's film I've seen.

Once I started watching the film last night, I could not take my eyes off the screen. I always look forward to seeing Peter Greenaway's film but Nightwatching is his masterpiece. It is my favorite of his work, and it goes to my top favorite films ever. It is long, yes, 135 minutes but I did not want it to end. Besides being as beautiful as any Greenaway's film, it covers so many subjects and does it so stunningly and brilliantly that it literally took my breath away. It includes a mystery behind the famous painting that the historians of Art have tried to solve for over 300 years, and it paints the canvas of life and times of the greatest Painter ever (yes, for me Rembrandt is IT), in the style that Rembrandt himself would've appreciated, and it succeeds in everything it was set to achieve, first and foremost being enormously entertaining. But the main reason why I LOVE the film, it did something I never thought a Greenaway's film would do - it almost reduced me to tears. I did not know he had it in him - to make a film not only clever and intelligent, sharp and satirical, gorgeous and exquisite, no big surprise here, but also gentle, passionate, full of love and tenderness, divine and earthy, and to make me fell in love with the screen Rembrandt, the flawed, loud, lusty, earthy man (outstanding superlative performance by Martin Freeman, he even looks like Rembrandt van Rijn) as much as I have been already in love with Rembrandt the Artist. It is not just a feast for brain, eyes, and ears but the food for soul, for feelings. How dare some viewers and critics call it boring? There is love, beauty, the blackest darkness, the glowing light, intrigue, mystery, crimes, history, grandeur, compassion, sex, sins, depiction of all stages of creative process and relationship between the Artist and his work, and there is Art of the highest quality in the film. There is so much to talk about; the movie provides endless references to works of Art. I just have to mention how masterfully Greenaway refers to three major loves of Rembrandt, three women he was connected to, was inspired by, and immortalized in his paintings. There is Saskia van Uylenburgh, his wife, the love of his life, his soul mate, the woman whom Rembrandt described his feelings for as "close and dear relative that he'd known and needed all his life" as Minerva in the beginning of the film. Later on, after Saskia's death, there was Geertje Dircx, with whom Rembrandt experienced the intense mostly physical affair, and to whom he had given some of Saskia's jewelry. Geertje can be seen laying on the bed in the same exactly pose as Danae on one of the St. Petersburg Hermitage most celebrated paintings. And then there was Hendrickje Stoffels, Rembrandt's last love whom he'd known since she started to work as a maid in his household in her early youth. Hendrickje sat for the paintings of Flora and Bathsheba among others. At one point, we see her striking the pose of A Woman bathing in a Stream from London National Gallery. I see these references to the Rembrandt art as just a few gifts for a grateful viewer from the hundreds the film has to offer. This is the best biography film I've seen. Nightwatching is the movie that makes me believe in cinema. Everything I ever wanted from a film, Nightwatching has and even much much more. One of a kind, it is a marvel, unsurpassable.

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5 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :-
Essentially for Greenaway admirers, but a little more appealing to the general audience than most of his work, 29 March 2008
Author: Harry T. Yung (harry_tk_yung@yahoo.com) from Hong Kong

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

The playin with light and shade in the opening scene is distinctly familiar, reminding me of the meat packing house and truck in auteur Peter Greenaway's classic :The cook, the thief, his wife and her lover" (1989) (and, incidentally, a Helen Mirren that is very different from her latest screen persona of HM QE II). Throughout "Nightwatching", this mesmerizing visual trance persists, set in the seventeenth century Dutch Golden Age. And there is Baroque background music to match the mood.

To those whose only awareness of the name Rembrandt is that it belongs with the same group as Van Gough (as is my case), this movie is informative, perhaps even instructive to the extent of its contents that are not fictionalized. Told in somewhat unusual fashion, Nightwatching is the story of the legendary Dutch painter from it zenith of fame and fortune to eventual decline. Somewhat unusual in that at various intervals of the convention linear story, there are interjections of the protagonist soliloquizing, talking directly to the audience. Nearly soliloquizing, I should say, because the subject matter of each of these scenes is someone important to his life, who appears beside him and makes sparodic responses. Most prominent of these are his wife Saskia (Eva Birthistle) and his romance/erotic liaisons Hendrickje (Emily Holmes) and Geertje (Jodhi May). There are also other scenes with similar distinct flavour.

The title role belongs, however, to Rembrandt's most famous painting, "The Night Watch", which is arguably also the most controversial. The movie recounts in great detail how this work is commissioned by the Amsterdam Musketeer Militia, not really soldiers but an exclusive social club of a group of influential merchants. What started out as a lucrative professional and artistic, but otherwise ordinary undertaking turns ominous when one of the merchants dies, purportedly as a result of an accident. Upon discovering that there is possible treachery and perhaps even murder, Rembrandt used his elaborated painting to make an accusation, through subtle hidden clues. The revenge attempts of the accused eventually led to his decline in fortune.

His other misfortune, from a more natural cause, is Saskia's failing health and eventual death. While his sorry is genuine, it does not take long for him to seek solace, in succession, in two servants: erotic, vulgar Geertje and young, modest Hendrickje. The three women's distinct quality – intelligence, sensuousness and innocence, respectively – are well portrayed by the three actresses.

Martin Freeman's portrayal of Rembrandt is a man of immense talent but unrefined character that can be almost described as bawdy and licentious. Whether this is true to history or not, it makes good dramatic appeal. With a fair amount of focus on the murder mystery, Director Greenaway has made this, his latest film, more appealing to the non-art-house audience. The two-hour-plus adventure into Greenaway-land however would probably be still a bit too much for the audience at large to take. Greenaway admirers, needless to say, will ensure that they won't miss "Nightwatching".

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7 out of 16 people found the following comment useful :-
Mannered and Dull, 16 November 2008
5/10
Author: GeneSiskel (robert.e.olsen@gmail.com) from Washington, DC, United States

This film, which I saw yesterday at a single, sparsely attended 4:00 p.m. show, part of an AFI European film festival, may thrill Greenaway fans, but a broad cross-section of movie lovers will probably find it mannered and dull. Shot Rembrandt-style, it apparently aspires to be an homage to art, to the 17th century artist, and to his early-modern eye for humanity -- the cinematographer keeps coming back to, and lingering over, eye shots -- combined with a detective story, a psychodrama, a domestic drama, a costume drama, a self-conscious allusion to the director's earlier dramas, and a brawling, lusty slice of Low Country life in the era when kings waged war with parliaments, city walls were just starting to come down, and commerce was beginning to muscle aside the gun as the engine of empires.

The film badly needs editing. Everything that happens when a camera is turned on is not necessarily art or even interesting. The 144 minutes I saw would have benefited had they been shrunk by nearly an hour. First kill all of the improvised scenes. Then kill all of the gratuitous sex scenes and needless expletives. Then kill all of the scenes in which an actor talks directly to the audience. Then kill all of the precious, mannered references to other Greenaway films -- statues played by semi-nude actors, sides of beef hung out to dry, etc. etc. Tighten up the detective story. Lighten up the art analysis. Minimize the posing scenes. Voila. You'd be at 90 minutes without any problem.

Not for the uncommitted or the faint of heart.

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16 out of 34 people found the following comment useful :-
Fails to do anything but make me sleep and write this comment., 21 April 2008
3/10
Author: Whadever from Belgium

I don't know anything about Peter Greenaway and I don't pretend to be a cinema zealot, but I am very open minded when it comes to movies. I love stories in general and cinema really has a great way to convey stories upon people without having to spell it all out. As the saying goes, an image can say more than a thousand words. On top of this I am an avid Rembrandt fan. Not to say that he's better than anyone else, but as everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion; I will state for myself that I like him better than most other painters. Considering his work is still around, there has to be a good reason for this.

Still... I did not like this movie. Not because I was disappointed by the director or the actors, I'm sure they all tried very hard to make this movie work. Sadly though for me, it didn't. I never fall asleep during a movie, but for this one, I closed my eyes several times. I noticed myself wanting it to be over so I could say I took it to the last minute.

I don't want to label it, but then why would I be posting anything? So I'm going to continue with committing the worst kind of sin:

'Nightwatching' failed to be accurately informative. So it was not a documentary. It also failed to make me laugh or cry or feel any emotion in between, except apathy maybe. So it was not a comedy, nor a drama nor anything in between. There was no action in it, no suspense and no horror and worst of all and contradictory to what you might expect from a movie about a painter; there was barely any art in it either. No scenes with Rembrandt painting or any of his work shown in detail. In over 2 hours of movie, we were treated with 1 analysis of his work during an obscure and darkly lit scene lasting barely 2 minutes.

Besides all this, the title "Nightwatch" is not the original name of the painting. The fact that the painting is called "De Nachtwacht" is because it turned dark over the years. This is an inherent quality of the paint that was used in those days. If you watch this movie with that in mind, some scenes will become obsolete to the point of being annoying.

The fact that Rembrandt cusses with the same 3 words throughout most of his dialogue makes him seem like a defenseless wimp who is powerless to come up with anything else. Therefore removing the option that the entire movie is a tribute to Rembrandt or his work.

If this movie tries to be a shocker, then the makers should realize that nudity has failed to shock ever since it became common in the seventies... Except maybe for an adolescent audience. But then the rest of the movie would undoubtedly turn this crowd away.

As a conclusion I did not tag the 'spoiler' box, because there seems to be no plot to this flick.

Avoidable to say the least. Check it out at your local library if you must, but otherwise don't spend any money on this. You will regret it.

(I don't want to offend anyone that really like this movie. If you like it go ahead! Nor do I want to insult the people that put a lot of effort into it; Next time though, try to make sure your effort joins with a little more sense. So other people can enjoy the fruits of it as well... after all that's what you're doing it for, right?)

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28 out of 67 people found the following comment useful :-
Dull and dreary Dutch drama, 19 January 2008
4/10
Author: johno-21 from United States

I saw this at the 2008 Palm Springs International Film Festival. It's amazing how such a visually interesting film can be so boring. But then the visual interest wears off after a short time as well. Thius is the story of Rembrandt's famous painting from 1642, Night Watch. A costume drama set during Netherland's golden age filmmaker, writer, director Peter Greenaway takes the approach of creating every scene in this film as if it were a Rembrandt painting. The background is very dark with objects and actors geometrically arranged and clever uses of light with a light source from either the side, underneath or back lit to illuminate the scenes in a minimalist way. The scenes are staged like a stage play rather than a film and in fact it is actually a stage play with super large sets on film. Martin Freeman is Rembrandt and is good in the role he's given but the script is so rambling and with modern language that it's like Shakespere on drugs. Freeman is in virtually every scene and alternates breaking the third wall by addressing the audience and inter playing with the fellow actors. His role is oddly one dimensional in that he emotes the same whether he's happy, sad, argumentative, threatened, combative or tender and it really gets old fast. The art direction is beautiful but it too gets old fast. This is also a very noisy film where there may be a scene with a large cast of actors on stage and instead of those talking in the background heard as soft murmur or not at all, they are amplified and almost drown out the main conversation critical to the story. To top off this cacophony of chatter there is often a violin playing at a feverish tempo in high notes that is nerve wracking but at least it helps keep you awake during this dreary Dutch drama. Production design by Maarten Piersma, art direction by James Willcock and costume design by Jagna Janicka and Marrit Van Der Burgt are well executed but can't save this mess. I would give this a generous 4.5 only for the wasted talent that went into it.

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25 out of 72 people found the following comment useful :-
Lots of four letter words, naked women (and men), and very little NIGHT WATCH, 4 March 2008
Author: hcaraso from France

In my old Balkan country, we used to have a wise saying warning against bothering with a huge sack to collect fruit from a famous fruit tree. This applies almost perfectly to the last Peter Greenway's Anglo-Polish-Dutch super production, around the creation of NIGHT WATCH, one of the most famous paintings in the world. Assassination attempts were performed against this masterpiece, resulting in its sheltering behind a thick glass in the Rijk Museum, and the same shelter may be used against this strange assembly of four-letter words, (predominant in modern movies), naked bodies sometimes sculptural, sometimes dull, and a certain research in the lighting; after almost 150 minutes of sometimes boring, sometimes nonsensical dialogues, the viewer hits home with the impression that his money was stolen. Only two movie theaters adventured to expose this failure (in my eyes, but the audience was heavy and very receptive), at my 4 pm show, in the exclusive artistic district of Saint-Germain des Près.A real waste of talent and efforts. I am not ready to view another Peter Greenway movie.Harry Carasso, Paris, France

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