Nightwatching - The Rembrandt plot

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Movie
German title Nightwatching - The Rembrandt plot
Original title Night watching
Country of production United Kingdom ,
Poland ,
Canada ,
Netherlands
original language English
Publishing year 2007
length 134 minutes
Rod
Director Peter Greenaway
script Peter Greenaway
production Kees Kasander
music Włodzimierz Pawlik
camera Reinier van Brummelen
cut Karen Porter
occupation
chronology

Successor  →
Rembrandt's Night Watch - Secrets of a Painting

Nightwatching - The Rembrandt Plot is an international co-production film drama about Rembrandt and his night watch (1642). The 2007 work (almost to mark its 400th anniversary) was directed by Welsh filmmaker Peter Greenaway . The focus of the intellectual costume drama is Martin Freeman with his portrayal of the painter.

The film is not to be understood in a factual or biographical way, and visually it is based on tableaus of the epoch. Greenaway's first regular feature film in eight years after extremely complex (multimedia) works has turned out to be halfway straightforward or narrative and in this sense a return.

action

1642 in Amsterdam : The war with Spain is just over. The 36-year-old Rembrandt van Rijn is a “pop star” of his time, a joker who frequented the highest social classes, brilliant in the debate, armored, if necessary obscene, upright in life and socially a climber. Wife Saskia is terminally ill.

The wealthy painter was commissioned to write the monumental The Company of Frans Banning Cocq (363 cm × 437 cm). He negotiates with agent and better half Saskia, orchestrates preparations, sets up, researches, equips, carries out rehearsals with all the pomp and ensures payment more or less diplomatically. He is actually supposed to paint the (insidious) muskets upside down, so as not to get near the betrayal of secrets. In public life, on the other hand, he is a serious adversary.

A member of Capt. Frans Banning Cocq , Piers Hasselburg, is the victim of an assassination attempt. He and Saskia learn a strange and ominous story from young Marieke. An orphanage recently changed hands and unknown powers turned it into a children's brothel. Then there are price cartels, insurance fraud, arson and the like. Overjoyed because of Saskia's pregnancy, whom he loves more than anything, he decides to uncover the almost impenetrable conspiracy as best he can on his own. His son sees the light of day. An actor is put on him; a witness disappears. Rembrandt is getting increasingly gloomy.

Saskia dies of the disease.

The rich and powerful of Amsterdam in the Golden Age - 34 people, including the Amsterdam regent Andries de Graeff portrayed by Rembrandt - "pose" for him as proud vigilante soldiers. This then turns out to be less of a still life than of noisy bunch and scramble. First he encodes numerous allusions symbolically in the picture, in front of the assembled team and formally with the brush in hand, he then raises his voice and goes on to the indictment. A shot goes off.

Rembrandt turns increasingly to the viewer (or to Saskia). He takes an ordinary maid, Geertje, as his lover. The men spin intrigues to make the compromising image disappear, never to be seen again. Rembrandt must fear for his life. In flashbacks and in a conversation with a hallucinated Hendrickje, Rembrandt, with a wink, gives several explanations of some of the previously seen details, without the film being finally committed. The conspirators almost manage to blind him physically, and they also had Geertje on their payroll. Instead he takes the young Hendrickje as his lover. Irrespective of this, the painting is understood as a daring break with tradition.

He wakes up in 1654 from this dark dream. He is impoverished and in danger of falling into madness. Its decline is said to be due to the image and the J'accuse , but this ultimately remains speculation.

backgrounds

Self-Portrait , 1640, National Gallery of Art , London
The Night Watch , 1642, Rijksmuseum
  • The film was made with support from the Wales Creative IP Fund, The National Lottery , UK Film Council, the Polish Film Institute, The Netherlands Film Fund, The Rotterdam Film Fund, MEDIA Plus of the European Union and the Canadian Film or Video Production Tax Credit Program. Cronfa ED Creadigol Cymru and Gremi Film Production were also involved. It produced Kees Kasander .
  • Filming began on September 4, 2006.
  • The film was shot completely digitally (HDTV) with the Thomson VIPER FilmStream Camera .
  • In addition to the music of Włodzimierz Pawlik, minimalist material by the cellist Giovanni Sollima was used.
  • Greenaway dedicated the film to the filmmakers Jenny Mitchell "in loving memory" and Garth Thomas .
  • The work had its world premiere on September 6, 2007 at the Venice Film Festival.
  • Main actor Martin Freeman seems to have remembered the hours of waiting for the elaborate lighting on the set .
  • Greenaway actually asserts the conspiracy derived from the image (see already The draftsman's contract ), even beyond the film. He was just as resolutely contradicted from an appointed mouth.
  • Greenaway has announced more films about Dutch masters.
  • Greenaway said, “What can you talk about but death and sex? These are the non-negotiable factors of life that make them irresistible. According to Balzac , the third factor is money, but any fool can get money. And that's just a defense against sex and death. As far as I'm concerned, my role as a filmmaker is to deal with that and decorate the scenery a bit. ”(The Japan Times)

Reviews

  • "Fans should partially get their money's worth [...] with a thirst for life in every recording" ( Jay Weissberg : Variety )
  • "Art with a capital 'K' [...] a film with a beating heart" ( Ian Bartholomew : Taipei Times)
  • “'Nightwatchers' tells a detective story about Rembrandt's 'Nachtwache', which is so involved and overbred that you cannot and probably should not understand it. [...] Together with his great cameraman Reinier van Brummelen , who immerses the pictures in an unreal palette of filter colors, cast shadows and backlighting , Greenaway indulges in the beauty of old Dutch painting. [...] Greenaway does the conventional cinema [...] brilliant film "( Dirk Schümer : Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung )
  • "Impressively lively and (strangely enough for him) downright romantic" ( Stephen Garrett : indieWIRE)
  • "[...] the core of it is the hyper-intensive dialogue [...]" ( Guy Dixon : The Globe and Mail )
  • "Greenaway's bizarre, sensual style is so strange that it hurts." ( Anne Brodie )
  • "A rambling, theatrical, often didactic study [...] Da Vinci Code for intellectuals [...] acts like a structuralist art history tract, sifted out by the paranoid spirit of a Philip K. Dick figure and performed in the tortuous mode of Shakespeare by men in knee breeches" (ScreenDaily.com)
  • “First the disclaimer: in 18 years I haven't liked a single Peter Greenaway movie. [...] passable (B-) "( Scott Tobias : A. V. Club)

Awards and nominations

Venice International Film Festival 2007

Dutch Film Festival 2007

  • Golden Calf in the Best Production Design category for Maarten Piersma
  • Golden Calf in the Best Screenplay of a Feature Film category for Peter Greenaway
  • Nomination Golden Calf in the category Best Cinematography for Reinier van Brummelen
  • Golden Calf nomination in the Best Director category for Peter Greenaway
  • Golden Calf nomination in the Best Film category for Kees Kasander

literature

  • Peter Greenaway: Nightwatching. A View of Rembrandt's the Night Watch . Veenman Publishers, 2007, ISBN 90-8690-013-5 (English).

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Jay Weissberg: Nightwatching. (No longer available online.) In: Variety . October 9, 2007; archived from the original on January 30, 2009 ; accessed on January 31, 2009 (English): "Fans should be partly satisfied [...] a zest for life in almost every frame" Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.variety.com
  2. ↑ - ( Memento of the original from September 16, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed January 31, 2009). @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.tiff07.ca
  3. ↑ a b Lee Marshall: Nightwatching. (No longer available online.) In: ScreenDaily.com. September 12, 2007, archived from the original on February 17, 2009 ; accessed on January 31, 2009 (English): “a rambling, theatrical, frequently didactic study […] Da Vinci Code for intellectuals […] It all comes on like a structuralist art history tract, filtered through the paranoid mindset of a Phillip K Dick character, but delivered in wordy Shakespearian style by men in breeches “ Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.screendaily.com
  4. ↑ a b c Peter Zander: Light into the dark. In: The world . September 7, 2007, accessed January 31, 2009 .
  5. ↑ cf. Press Kit, Director's Notes on characterization (detailed).
  6. ↑ “As Martin portrays him, Rembo [sic!] Was a down-to-earth fellow with a big heart, big needs and a developed sense of justice. This portrait as a normal guy with an extraordinary gift resembles Mozart in Amadeus [...] Freeman alludes to Greenaway's [...] mannerism in a down- to- earth manner . " Johnny Web: Nightwatching. In: www.scoopy.com. Retrieved February 2, 2009 : “As Martin portrays him, Rembo was a down-to-earth fellow with a big heart, big appetites, and a developed sense of justice. This portrayal of Rembrandt as an ordinary guy with an extraordinary gift is analogous to the portrayal of Mozart in Amadeus […] Freeman's down-to-earth portrayal of the painter significantly mitigates Greenaway's inherent tendency toward pretentiousness. "
  7. ↑ petergreenaway.org.uk, s. Web links.
  8. ↑ See Rembrandt's J'Accuse…! in the Internet Movie Database (English) and http://www.petergreenaway.info/content/view/136/1/ (both accessed on January 31, 2008).
  9. ↑ opening credits.
  10. ↑ a b c trailer.
  11. ↑ a b Press Kit.
  12. ↑ IMDb , "Technical specifications".
  13. ↑ Capone: Capone With HOT FUZZ's Martin Freeman About THE GOOD NIGHT, Peter Greenaway's NIGHTWATCHING, And More !! In: Ain't It Cool News. September 19, 2007, accessed on January 31, 2009 (English): "as an actor, obviously, you're used to waiting for the lighting, but you're not used to waiting THAT LONG for the lighting, you know. You're not used to waiting, like, half the day for the scene to be lit, but that's, of course, what gives his films their look "
  14. ↑ cf. The time , s. Web links. See http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/greenaway-tackles-rembrandts-demise-463782.html
  15. ↑ Alexander Hellbrügge, Thomas Radigk: Crime about Rembrandt! In: ttt - title, theses, temperaments . September 23, 2007, archived from the original on October 25, 2008 ; Retrieved January 19, 2014 .
  16. ↑ http://kasander.blogspot.com/search/label/Dutch%20Masters (accessed January 31, 2009).
  17. ↑ Kaori Shoji: The Renaissance Man. In: The Japan Times. January 10, 2008, accessed on January 31, 2009 : “After all, what's there to talk about really, except death and sex? These are both non-negotiable factors in life, which is what makes them so compelling. According to Balzac, the third factor is money, but any fool can have money. It's just a defense against sex and death, anyway. As far as I'm concerned, the role of myself as a filmmaker is to point this out and decorate the scenery a bit "
  18. ^ Ian Bartholomew: Art with a capital 'A,' and acting, too. In: Taipei Times. August 22, 2008, accessed on January 31, 2009 (English): "Art with a capital 'A,' […] It gives the film a beating heart"
  19. ↑ Dirk Schümer: The Reality of Pictures. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . September 7, 2007, accessed January 31, 2009 .
  20. ↑ Stephen Garrett: Toronto '07 Critics Notebook. In: indieWIRE. September 11, 2007, accessed on January 31, 2009 (English): "arrestingly vivid and (oddly enough for him) downright romantic"
  21. ↑ Guy Dixon: -. In: The Globe and Mail . Retrieved on February 1, 2009 (English, after Rotten Tomatoes ): "the dialogue's hyper-intensity is the whole point"
  22. ^ Peter Howell: TIFF '07: The buzz. In: Toronto Star. September 1, 2007, accessed on February 2, 2009 (English): "Greenaway's bizarre, sensual style is so odd it hurts"
  23. ^ Scott Tobias: Toronto Film Festival '07: Day Three. In: A. V. Club. September 9, 2007, accessed on January 31, 2009 : “Let me start with this disclaimer: I haven't liked a Peter Greenaway movie in 18 years. [...] I'll give it a pass. (B-) "