Rembrandt, along with Caravaggio and Vermeer, is certainly one of the most cinematic painters of all time, the one who has inspired cinema the most thanks to his skillful use of light. A film that "painted" his story and his world of light and shadow could only be shot by a director with a pictorial and aestheticizing spirit like Greenaway, an art scholar and painter before being a director.
Perhaps also due to ideological and personal affinities, the Welsh director has chosen to tell a particular period in the life of this provincial miller who quickly became, at just 23 years old, a celebrity in 17th-century Holland: a "mélange between Mick Jagger and Bill Gates" (Greenaway's words), if he had lived in our era. Nightwatching investigates precisely the breaking point, the moment of transition in which the career of this artist at the height of success received a jolt, bringing him to the brink not only economically, but also socially and personally.
Set in 1642, the film tells the story of the genesis of his most famous painting, Nightwatching, initially titled The Militia, a group portrait of a civic militia in Amsterdam. Working on the painting, Rembrandt will discover the conspiracy that his clients are orchestrating, and this will push him to courageously transform the painting into a real indictment against the powerful.
From here the beginning of his misfortunes, which Greenaway wanted to investigate, building a story that moves between criminal mysteries, political satire and amorous passions, and retracing the life of the painter and those around him at the time.
The story of a collapse, of the decay of a man who, unlike the many portraits of unruly artists seen in the cinema, is painted by Greenaway first and foremost as an ordinary man, carnal and with his feet on the ground. A simple, provincial man, portrayed even in his most material and unpleasant side, but precisely for this reason more authentic and ironic (also thanks to the interpretation of the heavy Martin Freeman, far from his usual comic, British and a bit "uncool" roles). Almost never portrayed in the act of painting, as one might instead expect from an artist's biography, the character of Rembrandt finds his strength in everyday behavior, in the relationship with his wife, in his visionary dreams, but above all in the director's ability to construct in each image real tableaux vivants, chiaroscuro games of light and shadow that are the perfect transposition into movement of the paintings/photograms of Rembrandt, an authentic forerunner of the seventh art.
The movement of the characters in the field only enriches his painting. And, unlike in other works by Greenaway, here his intrinsically pictorial style, meticulously curated and aestheticizing, never slips into cold mannerism, but is functional to the staging and content of a profound and engaging portrait of an artist. An artist who was probably, without knowing it, the first man of cinema in history.
Greenaway's pictorial style, meticulously curated and aestheticizing, never slips into cold mannerism, but is functional to the staging and content of a profound and engaging portrait of an artist.
(Chiara Renda)
The critics
“It is not surprising that, speaking of Rembrandt (the focus of his film Nightwatching), the cultured Peter Greenaway states: "He is not my favorite. He was more similar in his paintings and in his life to a certain Hollywood sensationalism and not only because of the artificial light reproduced in his paintings and capable of changing the formalistic schemes of painting of the time. I find Vermeer more interesting and I do not hesitate to compare Rembrandt, (who ended his life going from luxury to rags, but who at only 23 years old was rich and famous) to the sensationalistic image that Mick Jagger or Bill Gates have today". This is not a joke. And it is always interesting to listen to this director and see his films that sin of extreme aestheticism and overabundance but that start from a starting point - in the case of the film in competition, the mysteries behind one of Rembrandt's most famous paintings, The Night Watch - to arrive transversally at other considerations. Becoming all and always human and social frescoes. Greenaway points out: "The facts are framed in a perspective that from the past, 1642 in this case, can allude to the present". A premise is fundamental: Greenaway, who speaking of his film co-produced by six countries defines it as "a sort of investigation into a painting with 51 mysteries and secrets", will never be just a director, but is an author in search of light and every artistic expression. The reason is simple: he studied art, wanted to become a painter, loves to range in different fields, is an illustrator, essayist, author of beautiful (and very expensive) volumes on exhibitions and talents, is a director of operas, writer of short stories. Therefore, his eclecticism has found a ideal subject in a film that does not only have Rembrandt and his painting at its center, but a question: "What is painting, in fact?". Then, he adds: "What is or could cinema be?". Each of his provocations hides a metaphor, like his films and, since his cultured wandering on the screen must be deciphered, woe betide anyone who asks him why he inserted very strong sequences of sex in the second part, even if motivated by Rembrandt's carnality. He could have, after all, stopped at the simple analysis, already full of questions, of the painting "The Night Watch" and the repercussions it had on the artist's life. The answer is immediate: "And what should I talk about if not the pairing of sex and death?" As if to say: everything in life and art is money, conspiracy, painting, a voyeur's gaze, sensuality. He explains: "Rembrandt discovered, while he was painting the canvas, not only a murder, but that the militia officers, merchants and adventurers who had become soldiers in rich Amsterdam after the end of the war with Spain, were conspiring. His downfall and his self-analysis began also because in the meantime his wife had died and all of Rembrandt's political, sexual and moral contradictions were exploding". He adds: "I found in Martin Freeman an ideal interpreter and I can say the same about the actresses chosen for the female characters: the bourgeois wife, lover and friend, the carnal servant capable of igniting the most scurrilous instincts in Rembrandt, the sunny and young maid, who will awaken in him tenderness and a protective sense". Postscript by the director and the intellectual: "The film can be experienced as a cognitive investigation because looking at the painting it is clear that its author intended to tell us much more and we do not know exactly what. Why is there a man with only one eye and who seems to spy behind the crowd of characters? Is it a self-portrait of Rembrandt himself? After all, even literary fiction poses similar questions". The audience is divided into worshippers of his aestheticism and spectators who yawn. For everyone, Greenaway has an answer: "Cinema is image and thought, everyday life and imaginative hyperreality. I love films that ask questions".
Giovanna Grassi (Il Corriere della Sera, September 7, 2007)
“Nightwatching (The Night Watch) by Peter Greenaway with Martin Freeman is one of the most beautiful films presented by the Mostra in competition, a mystery around a famous painting, a bold hypothesis on the turning point in Rembrandt's life that in 1642 brought the great Dutch painter, a rich and respected personality, to discredit, unemployment, poverty.
The Night Watch is the famous group painting in which Rembrandt reluctantly portrayed the musketeers of the Civic Militia of Amsterdam. The director imagines that, by painting this special militia that guarded the city's merchant bourgeoisie, the painter discovers the military's plots and crimes, and that he leaves traces of these infamies in the painting. Discovered by the portrayed, he is persecuted even trying to make him blind, slandering him, spying on his private life: after the early death of his beloved wife, Rembrandt, already mature, had as companions first a governess (in a strongly sexual bond), then a very young girl.
The refinement of the narrative structure, the richness and sensuality of the structure, the beautiful photography by Reinier Brummelen, the music by Wlodek Pawlik, every perfection contributes to a story that excites and enchants, to the exceptional skill, culture and intelligence of Greenaway.”
Lietta Tornabuoni (La Stampa, September 7, 2007)
