Three generations of Colpitts — all women named Cissie — have developed problems with their husbands, and vow to solve their marital issues by drowning them — but however will they get away with it? The local coroner is infatuated with the Colpitts and abets them in obscuring the truth of their matricidal efforts, but with each murder comes an attack at his very conscience. How long can he handle the pressure?
Drowning by Numbers is a Peter Greenaway film, so his philosophical and societal examinations are presented through striking tableaus rich in colour, costuming (or more commonly the absence of any costume), and blackly perverse humour that revels in the shocking and grotesque — it's not a Greenaway if it ain't hard to swallow. His next film The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover is an aesthetic masterpiece that is rivalled by maybe 5 other films in existence, but the elaborate set production, staging, and blocking of Drowning by Numbers kinda puts it to shame, mainly because he's also filming a sizeable chunk of this film OUTSIDE in NATURE. He's really putting the green in Greenaway here. The countryside has never been more beautifully rendered.
Oh, I forgot to mention that the coroner has a lame chud son named Smut who's obsessed with death, invents a bunch of ridiculous games, and attempts to circumcise himself. And it's the games aspect that is integral to the story of Drowning by Numbers. While the film certainly operates as a feminist text — reclaiming power through the manipulation of male authority — it's just as much, if not more so, a film about the games we play in our daily lives. Whether it be the more metaphorical games we play in society — in particular the gender roles of everyday living, and how the Colpitts here learn to game these roles to get on top — or the games themselves bleeding through — the act of entering a games' Magic Circle™ comes with an understanding of the separation between the real and the artificial world, and the many games Smut has devised here maintain that split until the very end with one final game, Tug of War, deciding the fates of the coroner and the Colpitts three.
Then there's the meta-game Greenaway plays with the viewer, where the artificial world bleeds through to the real world as he invites us to count all the numbers in ascending order from 1 to 100 that he's hidden throughout the environment. They're either literally written out in the physical environment, mentioned within the dialogue (and context appropriate), or a particular object to be counted. It's like a Where's Wally book come to life, and it's fucking genius.
Good stuff.
Three generations of Colpitts — all women named Cissie — have developed problems with their husbands, and vow to solve their marital issues by drowning them — but however will they get away with it? The local coroner is infatuated with the Colpitts and abets them in obscuring the truth of their matricidal efforts, but with each murder comes an attack at his very conscience. How long can he handle the pressure?
Drowning by Numbers is a Peter Greenaway film, so his philosophical and societal examinations are presented through striking tableaus rich in colour, costuming (or more commonly the absence of any costume), and blackly perverse humour that revels in the shocking and grotesque — it's not a Greenaway if it ain't hard to swallow. His next film The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover is an aesthetic masterpiece that is rivalled by maybe 5 other films in existence, but the elaborate set production, staging, and blocking of Drowning by Numbers kinda puts it to shame, mainly because he's also filming a sizeable chunk of this film OUTSIDE in NATURE. He's really putting the green in Greenaway here. The countryside has never been more beautifully rendered.
Oh, I forgot to mention that the coroner has a lame chud son named Smut who's obsessed with death, invents a bunch of ridiculous games, and attempts to circumcise himself. And it's the games aspect that is integral to the story of Drowning by Numbers. While the film certainly operates as a feminist text — reclaiming power through the manipulation of male authority — it's just as much, if not more so, a film about the games we play in our daily lives. Whether it be the more metaphorical games we play in society — in particular the gender roles of everyday living, and how the Colpitts here learn to game these roles to get on top — or the games themselves bleeding through — the act of entering a games' Magic Circle™ comes with an understanding of the separation between the real and the artificial world, and the many games Smut has devised here maintain that split until the very end with one final game, Tug of War, deciding the fates of the coroner and the Colpitts three.
Then there's the meta-game Greenaway plays with the viewer, where the artificial world bleeds through to the real world as he invites us to count all the numbers in ascending order from 1 to 100 that he's hidden throughout the environment. They're either literally written out in the physical environment, mentioned within the dialogue (and context appropriate), or a particular object to be counted. It's like a Where's Wally book come to life, and it's fucking genius.
Good stuff.
