DROWNING BY NUMBERS (or THE GREAT DEATH GAME)
A film review by Jum Pellman
Copyright 1991 Jum Pellman
Peter Greenaway, who gave us the most intriguing film of last year (THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE, AND HER LOVER) is back with DROWNING BY NUMBERS. (Actually, DROWNING was made in 1988, two years before THE COOK, but is only now being released in the US.)
This very black comedy is the tale of three generations of women (all named Cissie Colpitts) whose love for, and solidarity with, one another leads them to drown their husbands. Each woman, in turn, uses sexual wiles to convince the local coroner, Madgett, to record the death as an accident, as the relatives and friends of the deceased get more and more suspicious.
As Greenaway fans know, he uses some visual device as a running theme in his films (drawings in THE DRAUGHTMAN'S CONTRACT, colors in THE COOK). In this case, it is numbers.
The film opens with a young girl playing a skip-rope game in which she counts a hundred stars as the introduction to a 1-to-100 count which runs throughout the film, charting its progress until the numbers run out and the drama is complete. The numbers appear unexpectedly in the foreground and background of various scenes. Some are hilariously obvious, others are quite subtle.
As to why he chose numbers to define the film, Greenaway says he is intrigued with numbers and games, and he used the counting device "to deliberately indicate the artificiality of the film. We progress the number count as well as the narrative count. They very neatly finish simultaneously. You know the film is over, and you can all go home."
The running count is only one set of numbers in the film. The preponderance of items appearing or happening three times only begins with the three sisters. The film could easily be called DROWNING *IN* NUMBERS.
One reviewer suggests that the film "takes murderous aim at our obsession with gamesmanship and the semblance of order, through lists and rhymes and formulas that have more to do with ancient superstition than science. It's all a sham anyway, Greenaway reminds us. To impose what we call logic on the illogical only points up how pathetic and insecure we are."
Like Greenaway, the characters of Madgett and his young son, Smut, are obsessed with games and are always creating new ones, the rules of which are narrated offscreen by Smut, as we watch the various characters play them. At a wedding, the 75 guests participate in "Hangman's Cricket," for example.
And Smut is always counting something: hairs on a dog, leaves on a tree. One of Smut's solitary games is to discover, count, and label animals throughout the local area which have met a violent death. He commemorates each by setting off fireworks.
(Note: DROWNING does not contain the same type of graphic violence seen in THE COOK, and is much lighter and more humorous in tone. Several have called it Greenaway's most accessible film. Nonetheless there are some scenes that some might find objectionable.)
As in THE COOK and THE BELLY OF AN ARCHITECT, Greenaway uses his training as a painter and his love of the great Dutch painters of the Golden Age to create lush, detailed, and impossibly elaborate scenes. No one ever made the windblown English seashore look so appealing. Every frame provides an incredible tableau of color and texture.
Greenaway comments, "East Anglia--Norfolk and Suffolk--where we filmed, is as close to the country of Holland as you can get across the channel. It has wide-open skies, long flat horizons, beautiful golden light. A lot of my excitement for that part of the English landscape is very much written into the film."
And as in past Greenaway films, Michael Nyman provides the Mozartian chamber music score (some of which you will recognize from the other films)--its repetitiveness provides an appropriate counterpart to the detailed visuals.
The level of symbolism used is mind-boggling: insects, pieces of fruit, sheep, fires, joggers, and Biblical names appear throughout the film; one jogger runs through scenes tossing multicolored ribbons in the air; the town grave-digger always seems to be hanging around; and of course, the ubiquitous numbers (a friend points out that numerologists will have a field day with this movie). What does it all mean? Only Greenaway knows.
He hints that he has attempted to create a world that "mirrors life"--at least his own personal view of it: "I think as in life, the good do not get rewarded, the bad do not get punished, and the innocent always get betrayed."
One reviewer added: "Most of all, it suggests that a conspiracy of women is unbeatable." To be sure, the themes of blackmail and unrequited love are also well represented.
You may leave the theater scratching your head, but it's doubtful you'll leave bored. Greenaway fans or those with a taste for the unusual (and especially puzzle lovers) should be sure to catch this one.
Jim Pellmann (jpellmann@rational.com)
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