Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Justina The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

ozmirage I have resisted Greenaway's insistence on nudity for his performers almost from the beginning but he was right and I was wrong, because I was thinking in stage terms and he in visual-art terms. I misunderstood Helen Mirren exposing her amazing breasts in The Cook, Juliette Stevenson her steel-spring body in Drowning by Numbers, Joan Plowright's refusal to bare all in the same film, John Gielgud's courageous self-exposure in Propero's Books. When one performs for Greenaway, one crosses a threshold, one leaves the stage and enters the frame. I still do not know if he is a great artist but my opinion is irrelevant, he is a necessary one for our time. I salute him.

trombley-2 Ben: I can't begin to tell you how much I admire your work here. Your dancing, the music, and visuals all fit together in a most creative manner. I have taught film for the past 20 years, and have always presented Greenaway as one of the greatest (if not the greatest) of our time. He is so complex and abstract that many don't get it, and most don't bother to try. The drama (which is always well made in his films) is never the point. It is the feeling that we get through his creative blending of characters, visuals, and music that is always what he seems to be going for. After all, he is a painter, and approaches film from a painter's point of view, and an abstract painter at that. We can observe the quiet death of opera, ballet, and the concert hall over the 2nd half of the century, and see film take over as the leading art form to include music. This incredible ballet, of which you are so much a part, is without question one of the finest ballets of the 2nd half of the century, all the more important as it has been preserved on film. Thank you so very much for your outstanding contribution here. You are a very great artist, my friend; and like many before you, misunderstood by most.

match-3 I'm not familiar with Greenaway's other work; I mostly experienced this for Louis Andriessen's score (I'm a fan, and this isn't his best work, but it does have its moments). As for the film itself, let me say this: I like difficult art, and difficult cinema. I spend many hours justifying the existence of difficult art to others who are not quite so adventurous. I enjoy emotional distance and ambiguous meaning, taken even to Euro-trash extremes. And yet, I found this film to be the worst, most pretentious piece of crap I've ever seen in my life. It is very unattractive visually, and the film has dated very, very poorly in terms of its overall look. (Yes, you can tell this was made for TV...) Greenaway never knows when to get out of the way and let the images just breathe on their own... there is far too much information on screen at all times. If a first run through his completely awful text (which might pass as "edgy prose" in my junior high diary), set to Andriessen's music, wasn't enough for you, don't worry... he'll display the whole thing from start to finish in a slow side-scroll that features such high-tech effects as digitally-generated drop shadow. And his attempts at "choreography" are so banal in spots that you'll want to laugh out loud. Now I absolutely have to see another Greenaway film to see if they're all this bad. As for yourself, don't bother.

tedg What a man! He rewards in so many different ways. Here is one of them.The thing that attracts me about him is his remarkably abstruse references to arcane organizing principles which are fleshed out by reference to external ideas and images. But in order to appreciate these films, you need to do your homework.`Prospero's Books' is an example of this. It is what makes him important, but it also drives viewers away, including a significant percentage of those who pay admission.This work is something different all together. It is all there. You just have to sit back and enjoy. Nothing profound or erudite here, just pure pleasure.The formula seems to be to delegate large parts of the artistic endeavor, and stitch them together with a mastery of visual presentation. The music is wonderfully, accessibly composed and performed, not as his normal collaborator Nyman would have it. But the dance! Lovely. That's the core, turning this over to people who are among the best in their fields. The three dancers (all nude) evoke forces way beyond the erotic.The filming is only superficially experimental, using Greenaway's by now trademarked overlay technique. But it is ALL in overlay so there is no simultaneous sorting out of annotative images. It is filmed for video, so the color and screen ratio don't offend in that medium. Moreover, he has apparently carefully flattened the perspective for little TeeVee screens, and the choreography exploits this trick.The title is a puzzle. The box says `Not Mozart,' The tape says `M is for Man, Music, Mozart.' But the movements are 4: Man, Movement, Music and Mozart, and there is really no Mozart in the film. It would be characteristic of Greenaway to make a point about the empty filigree of his music compared to say the real substance of Chopin. (The Music section has listeners holding their noses while Man "learns.") But that's just speculation. The video seemed about an hour long.It is not important (read difficult) Greenaway. But if you like dance, you'll love this little work.