Lush pictorial landscapes and satirical juxtapositions of time are the order of the day here, with director Peter Greenaway spinning a yarn about a futuristic military manoeuvre in stark concurrence with the creation of five lakes. The description might suggest elements of science fiction, however, that really isn't the case, as the director creates a formal, visual essay, very much in-keeping with the style that he would later employ with his breakthrough film, the Borgesian mock-documentary, The Falls (1980). Here, the film also uses certain aspects of impressionist cinema, recalling elements of Werner Herzog's similarly experimental film Fata Morgana (1971), with the more recognisable style of David Attenborough's natural history films; a particular stylistic appropriation that Greenaway would return to on his later project, A Zed and Two Noughts (1985).
Unlike those particular productions, this is a very simple film that plays on the British tradition of an almost realistic approach to surrealism; with much of the narration delivered with a typically English, stiff-upper-lipped type series of announcements familiar from post war broadcasting. We also find many of the director's future trademarks beginning to take shape, however, with none of the bold storytelling devices or opulent cinematography and production design that would underline such films as The Cook The Thief His Wife and Her Lover (1989), The Baby of Mâcon (1993) and the Pillow Book (1996) as such singular works of cinema.
This is a simply an experiment for the director, and thus, not really worth the effort of an audience unfamiliar with the broader aspects of Greenaway's career, instead being something that long-term fans might decide to seek out in order to give a great context to his later, aforementioned film, The Falls. As a side note, I saw this picture on a compilation tape that also featured Dear Phone (1977) and A Walk Through H: The Reincarnation of an Ornithologist (1978) and this was the most abstract and bizarre.
