Greenaway’s Eisenstein in Guanajuato

Sergei Eisenstein is considered as Russian as vodka, but technically, he was born in Riga when Livonia was a governorate of the Russian Empire. He is responsible for some of the most successful propaganda films of all time, but some of his later films were also banned by Stalin. He was already a complicated figure before Peter Greenaway came along with a film suggesting Eisenstein engaged in a passionate affair with a male lover during his ill-fated Mexican venture. That relationship is somewhat fictional, but there is plenty of scholarship regarding his closeted sexuality. Of course, such contentions are highly controversial in today’s rabidly homophobic Russia. Once again, the Putin regime follows in the Soviet tradition. As Greenaway notes, during the Stalinist years, homosexuality was punishable with a term of hard labor in a Siberian gulag. That would give the Soviet auteur good reason to hide his sexuality in Greenaway’s Eisenstein in Guanajuato (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Eisenstein shot plenty of film in Mexico, but it would be left to others to edit it together into the some kind of order. Frankly, we will not see him shoot much of anything, because he is too preoccupied with Palomino Cañedo, a leftwing comparative religion professor serving as Eisenstein’s personal escort—very personal. Smarting from Hollywood’s rejection, Eisenstein came to Mexico to shoot Que Viva Mexico, a supposedly non-ideological celebration of post-revolutionary life in the county, as well as its folk customs, produced by Eisenstein’s American admirers, including Upton Sinclair. However, the film became a spiraling disaster worthy of Orson Welles.

Whether entirely true or not, Greenaway’s screenplay certainly explains how Eisenstein completely lost control of the project. We quickly get a sense Eisenstein has long tried to deny his orientation, which gives rise to a host of hang-ups and self-esteem issues. This being a Peter Greenaway film, there are also plenty of Full Monty shots, exposing the source of some of Eisenstein’s insecurities to the full view of the audience.

Like most Greenaway films, Guanajuato is dazzling both in its visual presentation and its erudition. Greenaway clearly draws on an intimate familiarity with Eisenstein’s work, but while he often incorporates archival photos and film stills in his Greenawayesque collages, Greenaway is never groaningly obvious in his homages. We never see Eisenstein stop to stare at a staircase and shake his head, as if to say “nope, can’t use that one.” However, the most impressive aspect of the film is the razor sharp dialogue, in which we can hear Eisenstein subtly suggest a disconnect between the Soviet promise and the Soviet reality, while never explicitly critiquing Stalin’s dictatorship.

Finnish actor Elmer Bäck (co-star of The Spiral) is an eerie dead-ringer for Eisenstein and bold enough to let it all hang out for considerable stretches of time. Mr. Bäck does not have a lot of secrets left after this one—nor does Luis Alberti, who is nearly as exposed as Cañedo. Frankly, there romantic chemistry is a bit questionable, but Eisenstein’s assorted angsts are completely convincing.

Despite its messiness, Guanajuato is a tour-de-force that harkens back to the hothouse vibe and postmodern subversiveness of Greenaway’s classic Pillow Book. The fact that has caused a good deal of awkward teeth-gnashing in Russia is also a nice bonus. Recommended for mature, grown-up cineastes, Eisenstein in Guanajuato opens this Friday (2/5) in New York, at the Lincoln Plaza and Angelika Film Center.

The Pillow Book: Greenaway’s Masterwork Restored

Think of it as a Lady Snowblood style payback drama set within the delicate serenity of a rock garden. Born to a Japanese father and a Chinese mother, Nagiko is a fashion model who enjoys the grace of fine literature and calligraphy just as much as the pleasures of the flesh. She also appreciates the satisfaction of revenge served stone-cold. As sensual, transgressive, and erudite as it was when it was initially released nineteen years ago (nearly to the day), Peter Greenaway’s The Pillow Book (trailer here) has now been freshly restored and reissued on DVD and BluRay by Film Movement Classics.

As a cherubic young girl, Nagiko always delighted in her father’s birthday face-writing ritual. Since she idolized her novelist father, literature will always play a critical role in her life. However, it is her aunt who first introduces her to the most significant book in her life, Sei Shōnagon’s Pillow Book. Throughout the film, Greenaway incorporates scenes of the Heian-era lady-in-waiting reading her timeless meditations, usually in compartmentalized windows that become part of Greenaway’s wider visual composition.

While Nagiko was still too young to fully understand, she witnesses her father’s publisher sexually exploiting him, as a clear quid pro quo for publishing his work. As she becomes older and more experienced, her father’s humiliation haunts her. Years later, Nagiko will also be published by the same lecher, but he is not the least bit interested in her. To sell the first of her unconventional pillow books, Nagiko paints it on the body of their mutual lover, Jerome, a bisexual British translator. For a while, this method of delivery is quite effective, but love triangles always engender jealousy. In this case, it also leads to tragedy, desecration, and retribution.

Greenaway has always been a distinctive stylist, but Pillow is an especially rich feast for the eyes. He engages in plenty of his characteristic boxing and tiling, but he also channels the look and vibe of Kabuki and Noh theater. It is a gorgeous film, made even more so by Vivian Wu in her breakout, career-defining role. Yet, there is substance underneath Greenaway’s lush surface beauty. Arguably, Pillow Book represents a milestone in experimental storytelling in that it tells a distinct, compelling, and easily followed narrative, within a boldly avant-garde framework.

Quiet but fierce as a lion, Wu commands the screen while steaming it up. A young Ewan McGregor also gives viewers the Full Monty as the immature but passionate Jerome (Obi-Wan, oh behave). Their scenes together explain why the film was never rated. Still, it is important to remember Pillow is not all about sex. In fact, Chizuru Ohnishi and Ken Ogata are quite memorable and engaging as young Nagiko and her father, thereby setting up everything that follows.

With Pillow, Greenaway taps into some deep archetypes, while celebrating Japanese and Chinese culture with the obsessive devotion of a western expatriate. It might just be the greatest Gaijin film ever. Exquisitely crafted, Pillow could still be too scandalous for the timid (arguably, the Lord’s Prayer body painting scene might be needlessly vexing some, since it is not really intended as a provocation), but it is an eerily beautiful film. Highly recommended for fans of challenging auterist cinema, The Pillow Book releases today (6/9) on DVD and BluRay, from Film Movement Classics.

The Night Watch: Rembrandt’s J’Accuse

Rembrandt van Rijn’s The Night Watch might be the fourth most recognizable painting in the world, but it is also the most misunderstood work of the great masters. So argues Peter Greenaway CBE, the celebrated British filmmaker and academically trained artist. It is Greenaway’s authoritative floating head that explains the mystery (as he interprets it) behind Rembrandt’s masterpiece in his documentary Rembrandt’s J’Accuse (trailer here), which opens this Wednesday in New York.

Greenaway bemoans the “visual illiteracy” that allows millions of Rijksmuseum visitors to dutifully gaze at The Night Watch, only to miss the ominous clues hidden in plain sight. Greenaway structures J’Accuse around fifty questions based on his close reading of the painting and the circumstantial evidence of Rembrandt’s life. Though Greenaway stops short of leveling a specific charge as such, he clearly casts suspicions on one Banning Cocq, the captain of the militia company that commissioned Rembrandt’s famous painting, in the untimely death of his predecessor.

Rembrandt deliberately departed from the conventions of the established Dutch “Militia Painting Style”—a decision Greenaway attaches great importance to. Like a good Poststructuralist academic, Greenaway gives The Night Watch a thorough deconstructing, with varying degrees of success. Some of his questions seem quite reasonable indeed, like why is there a smoking musket in the painting and just where did that shot go? However, some of his conjectures seem a bit fanciful, as when he finds sexual implications in where the shadow of Banning Cocq’s arm happens to point.

Greenaway illustrates his case with vignettes of Rembrandt’s life using the cast of Nightwatching reprising their roles from his thematically related narrative film. While the dramatic interludes help the audience visualize the film’s characters and conflicts, Greenaway himself is a quite a compelling narrator who commands the screen with his erudition. While some of his points might be somewhat dubious, listening to him lay out the case is utterly fascinating.

Yet, the obvious objection to Greenaway’s thesis remains: if Night Watch was such an obvious indictment of the nefarious Banning Cocq, why was the painting publically displayed for years at the militia’s headquarters instead of being destroyed or simply hidden away to protect the guilty? Still, Greenaway certainly convinces us there is a great deal of murky intrigue going in Rembrandt’s canvas.

Though at times J’Accuse is largely an extended lecture from Greenaway, it is surprisingly stimulating visually. By evoking the warm light and dark shadows of Rembrandt’s paintings, cinematographer and visual effects designer Reiner van Brummelen further draws the audience into the painter’s Seventeenth Century world.

Created with a painter’s eye, J’Accuse is an elegantly constructed documentary hybrid that will hold viewers rapt with its dazzling feats of historical speculation. It might gloss over logic from time to time, but it will definitely alter audience perceptions of the Rembrandt masterpiece. Given the prevalence of propaganda in our daily lives, Greenaway’s larger point regarding visual literacy is actually quite timely. He definitely gives an interesting demonstration of how to critically parse and analyze imagery, as well an entertaining art history lesson in J’Accuse. It opens Wednesday (10/21) at Film Forum.

(Photo courtesy of ContentFilm International)