Peter Greenaway

England | 2007 | 134mins | 35mm | Colour

Rembrandt’s painting The Night Watch was considered to be a radical political statement in its day and is brimming with political and aesthetic allusions. It is therefore a subject perfectly matched to Peter Greenaway’s considerable intellect, resulting in a masterful work that is at once a tale of aristocratic intrigue as well as a formidable exercise in art history and theory.

The story begins in 1642, and Rembrandt van Rijn is the most acclaimed painter in Europe. At the absolute height of his career he is asked to take on a new comission which would require him to paint the Amsterdam Musketeer Militia, thirty-one amateur soldiers of the Amsterdam Home Guard, on parade. At the insistence of his pregnant wife Saskia, who is anxious to create a secure future for their unborn, longed-for child, he finally agrees to accept the commission, prophetically fearing ill fortune as a result.

Rembrandt expects the soldiers to be somewhat difficult to deal with, but soon learns of the many seedy conspiracies within their ranks, and resolves to expose their hypocrisies through the portrait itself.

Greenaway uses these elements to create a suspense thriller, involving the lead up to and immediate aftermath of the creation of Rembrandt’s most controversial work. The visual aspects of the film are consistently stunning, with Greenaway going to considerable lengths to cinematically realise the fabrics, metals, light, period details and sense of space that make Dutch art of the Golden Age, and all of Rembrandt’s work, so stirring and impressive.

The [Coen] brothers have conjured a crazy-quilt, comic thriller in the form of a sex farce. The result is wildly funny…and indisputably daring – Rolling Stone