boring or genius

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I vote genius. This movie made my fall hook, line and sinker for Greenaway. I love the underlying structure to it, and the beauty and the game of 1-100. It's got images that have stuck in my brain like superglue.

BUT I forget that, as said above, Greenaway isn't for everyone. I excitely went to a museum screening of this with a post-movie discussion and was caught off gaurd that most of the audience really disliked it and was sort of angry.

It is a classic because it doesn't pander to taste or fashion.

It is quintessentially English and it has a top soundtrack by Michael Nyman.

The camera work, lighting, use of still life/insects are intriguing and it does not shy away from hefty subjects such as moral duty, honesty and how much children should know about sexuality.

The numbers theme is quirky and pompous, but in an entertaining way.

I love the film. I vote genius!

Of course, that is subjective.

I saw it at 15 in a local cinema. I had never heard the name Greenaway before and I was totally blown away. My strongest visual memory is of apples and wasps. I remember that my thoughts at the time (I did not have the tools for analysis at the time, never having encountered anything more demanding than Disney before)was that the structure was a whole all the time, whilst making you believe it was divided up into chunks. At least that's what I wrote in my diary.(though in Swedish, of course) For a while I wasn't sure what I meant by that, but these days I am starting to understand it again.

I have not seen this film since, so it is now 17 years ago, but all the visuals are still extremely clear and vivid in my memory.

The thing was that I felt like _I_ got_ it_. In a time when I had trouble making sense of anything in the world. I usually perceive works of art intellectually, even when very young, and this just skipped my cortex and went straight for the spine. It was like someone had grabbed me and held me upside down and said "Look - this view of the world is also correct"

So to me it is genius - or it was when I was fifteen. A defining moment, to be sure.

Genius. Actually my favorite Greenaway movie. Why, oh, why has this not been released on dvd in he US. Now that The Conformist has finally come out this is, to me, the next most important missing film.

Genius. The lush photography is like nothing I have ever seen. Even the sound is well done. (the creaking beach house, the nighttime animal sounds, Sid's fire) I think you have to watch it more than once because the beauty of the scenes is distracting from the complex and bizarre story. The wedding on the beach has to be one of the most far out sequences ever filmed.

Different. Greenaway is the one British Film Institute director that requires, for me, the most patience. He frames things like paintings and does not do a great deal of close-ups which makes it more difficult for me to engage in the characters. I still find his films visually unforgettable, but he is definitely not everyone's cup of tea, just like any other director.