United Kingdom, Poland, the Netherlands, Canada, 2007
Directed by Peter Greenaway
With Martin Freeman (Rembrandt van Rijn), Eva Birthistle (Saskia), Jodhi May (Geertje), Emily Holmes (Hendrickje), Christoph Pieczynski (Jacob de Roy), Kevin McNulty (Hendrick Uylenburgh), Natalie Press (Marieke), Fiona O’Shaughnessy (Marita), Chris Britton (Rombout Kemp), Harry Ferrier (Carl Hasselburg), Maciej Zakoscielny (Egremont), Adrian Lukis (Frans Banning Cocq)
This is not the first time a film examines the life and works of great 17th century Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn – think of Alexander Korda in 1936 (“Rembrandt”) or Jos Stelling in 1977 (“Rembrandt fecit 1669”). What sets right away director Peter Greenaway’s effort apart is the space of it: characters leap from the architectural frame typically bearing the long, heavy curtains that hide or reveal the stage of a theater – in this case they are widely, though not entirely, drawn away. That frame, however, is not attached to any wall and actually few walls are shot standing during the 137-minute running time. The world where the film takes place is just a matter of huge, evocative props genuinely typical of the 17th century Amsterdam, which are slid along the floor. This is not a real, traditional cinematographic work of reconstruction: what Korda showed is absolutely not what Greenaway delivers. “Night Watching” is rather a partly rebuilt environment that has a striking degree of abstraction, though it is not as abstract and muted, pointedly out of time and references, as the backdrop of the 1986 film of Alain Cavalier “Thérèse”. It is more definitely like the giant stage of a theater, filmmaking reinventing theatrics.
This open-ended stage, which sometimes give way to more conventional outdoors shots (though there is the feeling that they have been taken inside a studio, so fake the distant horizon looks), is constantly morphing as the convoluted narrative proceeds. What remains riveting, beyond the characters, is the play of light, shadows, and colors – Greenaway claimed his and his crew’s efforts were all about capturing the magical and spectacular effect of chiaroscuro, sober hues, power of light, that have defined the paintings of Rembrandt and of the Dutch painting tradition. Arguably, it is successful, at least it is a visual interplay between light, shadows, and colors that from the very start is enticing, exciting, expressing carefully the tone of the scenes. The world the painter put on a canvas is now the world his fictional expression inhabits.
If the theater stage is harnessed to offer a visual splendor reflecting what is at stake in the film, the very art of the painter and how he used it and managed it like a wealthy but whimsical professional, it still induces to drop some cinematic rules and to embrace theatrical ones. So, the fourth wall is crucially knocked down at key moments, the actor talking to the camera, fully aware he is telling a fiction. Those moments pertain to the first main strand of the narrative, the amorous life of Rembrandt: the painter evokes how he felt in love with the three women he is known to have lived with, Saskia, the niece of his art merchant, the famous Hendrick Uylenburgh, then, when Saskia died in 1642, Geertje, the maid who looked after his son Titus, and when he repudiated her, Hendrickje. The film relates how deep and intense the relation with a witty and gracious but also highly businesslike and realistic wife, then how lust draws him to Geertje till things get awry, and then what a reprieve and a bliss Hendrickje appears. By contrast, this is the portrait of a lover who can be passionate, pursuing full happiness, seeking to feel fuller and better – Saskia is conspicuously cast as a wonder to him and an extraordinary opportunity for his life and art.
The death of Hendrickje, in 1663, does not feature: that tragedy that shook up Rembrandt, is overlooked, as many other aspects of his life. There is no flashbacks and no digression: unlike the other films, this new take on Rembrandt is not a comprehensive biopic. It is focused only in the 1640s, the last moments of happiness with Saskia, the fraught and doomed marriage with Geertje, and above all the making of one of his most celebrated and complex works, and the consequences it seemed to have on his social position in the republic, “The Night Watch/The Company of Captain Frans Banning Cock and Lieutenant Willem van Ruytenhurch” (1642).
That other pole of the film is a detailed chronicle becoming an investigative story. From the commissioning of the painting by militia leaders Carl Hasselburg and Egremont to the way Rembrandt got slandered by the discontented aristocrats featured in the painting, from the difficult task of choosing the right postures and props to the shenanigans by Frans Banning Cock, who took the position of Carl Hasselburg after the latter got killed in an accident as the militiamen trained to fire, to cast the painting into oblivion, the film cleverly highlights every twists and turns and delves increasingly into a typical murder mystery. The painting is no longer just a depiction, however questionable it is, but a network of allusions and allegories that add up to an indictment. The key is that Rembrandt has grown convinced that Hasselburg was deliberately killed, and Egremont, who has been forced to run away, would sustain this suspicion, and that the new strongmen of the militia should be held accountable for the crime.
More broadly, Rembrandt is cast as a cunning and critical mind invited to take stock of the evil around him, precisely of how rotten the contented elite of his nation is, starting with the drama involving Rombout Kemp, another member of the militia, busy with charitable works, including the running of an orphanage: one of his daughters, enigmatic and ethereal Marieke, claims to be both an angel and an assaulted infant, while the other, Marita, got defaced after flirting with a young man from the orphanage; it turns out Rombout Kemp hides behind his stern morality and sour face a thoroughly disreputable character; and that subplot gets connected to the suspected murder and the wider drama of aristocrats without morality and without qualms played on a stage that is as ribald and promiscuous as it is embarrassed with riches, luxury, and glory. Rembrandt would be more than pleased to denounce and mock the men – this is the main meaning his painting gets in the film – but of course would have to pay the price.
Or is it not the case, as suggested by his close friend Jacob de Roy, that he is targeted for using art in a fashion too extravagant for his fellow Dutchmen? He has been too interested in theater and wanted too clearly painting to express the pretense and the movement defining the actors but actually are what make real people exist in society, while those real people only desire innocuous and playful representations.
This is the kind of remark too conveniently justifying part of the film – the reinvention of the theater stage. It also points to the most problematic aspect of the whole enterprise: the eagerness to use a famous painting to create a witty, surprising plot, hijacking arguably mysterious details that have puzzled critics for centuries to tell a thrilling murder story, making the moving images astutely giving a dizzying lesson in how to read anew a still image – call it a reinterpretation of a medium by a reinterpreted medium. But spinning an outstanding yarn out of the playfully allusive and allegorical details of a Baroque painting is rather an easy piece of work lazily advertising sophistication and wit and what the story; it is dubious it can fit with the actual context; and above all it keeps the audience from truly watching and understanding the painting – that is, to appreciate what Rembrandt does draw, paint, color.
One of the film’s producers, Jean Labadie, claimed this 2007 production was the return of Greenaway to the style and contents of his famous 1982 period piece, “The Draughtsman’s Contract”. More that that in fact: “Night Watching” is merely treading the same ground, mixing murder mystery and art criticism to unveil a stinging critique of the European social elite on the eve of the revolutionary 18th century. The big difference is that Rembrandt, though as reckless and provocative as Mr. Neville, is not just far more sympathetic and feisty – he uses his art to reveal the truth, he is not unwittingly used to mask the truth. His vision tells it all, it is not framed by others. The artist calls the shot and holds his ground and the center of it all – so the film cannot be anything less than this flamboyant reflection of his perception of light, shadows, colors, love, humanity, art. It is obviously a gorgeously crafted film, an astonishing and inventive period piece and thus it remains compelling – but at the same time it is also a wanton intellectual game that struggles to convince while turning the other part of the narrative into mere raunchy episodes tacked to the need for a plot even as they are moving glimpses on the real man. But it is not just a real man that has interested Greenaway.