The Belly of an Architect

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🎙️ EPISODE 561: 09.23.22 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝟏𝟎-𝐕𝐨𝐥𝐮𝐦𝐞 RANKING GREENAWAY 𝐒𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬 While clearly not on the level of his first two narrative features, The Belly of an Architect is nonetheless a great film. It frustrates in that it never truly comes together like previous entries The Draughtsman's Contract and A Zed and Two Noughts, but viewed in pieces, its every bit on their level (for example, the "draught through the keyhole" scene is perfection from start to finish). It's treading the same Greenaway ground with a few wrinkles: food and physical appearance/growth is a major theme, perhaps a counterpoint to Zed's obsession with decay. This also marks the first time Greenaway inserts a real life historical figure into the movie as a major character/device: the 18th century architect Étienne-Louis Boullée is at the very heart of this film.

Not only does the plot fully revolve around the Boullée exhibition that Brian Dennehy's Stourley Kracklite (again, Greenaway with these names!), an American who is commissioned to design/run the commemoration in Rome, but as an actual foil, as Kracklite seeks guidance by writing letters to the long deceased artist. It's a futile campaign, but it lets the viewer inside the mind of our increasingly self-isolating protagonist. There's also a homoerotic subtext to this that is either genius or altogether undercooked.

Stylistically, Greenaway continues to hone his much beloved and often symmetrical framing technique: his camera seldom moves, with each shot constructed as a moving painting, exquisitely lit, often peering through a window or a door. The viewer as voyeur motif comes full circle with the aforementioned and brilliant keyhole scene, which ends with Kracklite trading a gyroscope toy for an orange with a young boy. Kracklite then proceeds to eat the orange with a combined feverish hunger and total disgust. The final shot of the film is of the young boy playing with this circular orb; it cuts just as it falls off its pedestal. Everything means something in a Greenaway film and some things mean more than others.

The very capable Glenn Branca and Wim Mertens both contributed music for the score here, but the absence of Greenaway's longtime collaborator Michael Nyman is sorely missed. There might not be a better 1-2 punch in terms of a filmmaker and a composer complementing one another.

So much of this film relies on set construction, expert staging and the unbeatable presence of Rome itself, that the acting/actors almost never stand a chance. The shot of Kracklite sitting on a chair atop of his bed against the green glow of a photocopier that's furiously spitting out reproductions of pictures of a stomach closeup which then tilts down to show dozens upon dozens of these images obsessively lined up is perfect by itself. When his wife Louisa (played by Chloe Webb, best known as the Nancy in Sid & Nancy) enters the room to have it out, the dynamics between them are overwrought and the emotions are unearned (I just can't help staring at what Greenaway has positioned in that mirror off to the left!). This isn't to say that the acting is all bad; it's not. Dennehy truly gets into the role and is engaging throughout. It's odd to think of him let alone see him in a film like this, but it shockingly works.

It would be a much greater flaw––the acting and the writing/directing not being on the same page––in the hands of a less capable filmmaker, but Greenaway is the very definition of auteur. And so it works. It's not his best film by any stretch of the imagination, but it's a very good to great entry right in the middle of the best and most fertile period of his career.

CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 561A - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 562 ⫸

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The Belly of an Architect is a 1987 film drama written and directed by Peter Greenaway, featuring original music by Glenn Branca and Wim Mertens. Starring Brian Dennehy and Chloe Webb, it was nominated for the Palme d'Or (Golden Palm) award at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival. It was released on October 1, 1987.