Drowning by Numbers

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🎙️ EPISODE 576: 10.14.22 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝟏𝟎-𝐕𝐨𝐥𝐮𝐦𝐞 RANKING GREENAWAY 𝐒𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬 Roger Ebert, in his 2-star review of Drowning by Numbers, wrote that “When the movie was over, I was not sure why Greenaway made it.” That is at once the lowliest comment you can bestow on art of any kind and also unintended praise of the highest order, because you might leave this film wondering why we (humans) make or do anything. If you like this movie at all, there is a fine chance that you will love this movie completely. I am full-stop and unapologetically among the latter. The movie is so insular and quirky, it makes Wes Anderson look like Michael Bay. Conceived and filmed before the more popular Greenaway film The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover but released after, Drowning by Numbers is the perfect summation of his most fertile decade. It is (most likely) his best film.

This obsession with systems and with counting dates back to Greenaway's first feature: 1980's monolithic exercise in that and only that, The Falls. We even get a Tulse Luper shout-out right off the bat as a name for one of the stars the girl jumping rope counts. It's the first of many callbacks (or Easter Eggs, if you will). From the insects on decaying fruit (Zed) to the old man with the shovel who enters and exists scenes much like Draughtsman's living statue, DbN is a monument to this exquisite decade in film, an amalgamation and culmination of so many previous themes and visual ideas, sometimes piled so high atop one another they feel as though they're bursting from the screen.

The clutter in these scenes is intentional, of course. Systems are meant to be destroyed, or bogged down by so many rules they become meaningless. All systems are on the verge of collapse. Greenaway seems to be commenting on the relationship between systems vs. games. Is it symbiotic? Are they constantly at battle? Do games lose their appeal with rules, etc.? Or are they one in the same? The movie itself is a game: the numbers 1 to 100 are seen on screen or heard in order. Did you catch them all?

Visually, the film is as stunning as any cinematic experience in the history of the medium. Much credit to Sacha Vierny whom Greenaway has called his "most important collaborator." When I think of perfect cinematography I will always think of Madgett sitting in front of that tree at sunset. Credit is also due to its pristine and ultra crisp editing. The fast cuts serve to emphasize what are often profound moments at the end of scenes, by not allowing the the viewer time to ruminate. (And perhaps that's a trick, but if it is a trick: it's fitting given the subject matter, don't you think?)

It's not all games and math, however. There are larger themes at play, of course. The dynamics between men and women are often portrayed as some kind of game or war, and Greenaway seeks to level those notions here. The stakes in this world are your life, and the girls are undefeated. Our main characters are a grandmother, mother and her niece and they all share the same name Cissie Colpitts (another Falls reference). I can't imagine what meninists would think of a film where three generations of women all kill their husbands and get away with it. Thank god this film came out thirty years ago.

It's not so much a message of female empowerment, though. If this is a game, it's a game that nobody wins. The teenage boy character Smut, our narrator and a kind of avatar/referee for and on behalf of the audience, lays it out for us early on: "a great many things are dying very violently all the time." It's too real and lacking the sex appeal of the others, but The Great Death Game is what it's all about. Like A Zed & Two Noughts, DbN is constantly wondering if any death is natural. Life vs. Death: the greatest game of all, impossible to categorize or hold within the constraints of any system. The biggest questions and ideas put on film, and we still get AMAZING quasi non sequiturs like "are widows eligible for the Olympic Games?"

This film is relentless. It charges ahead for the duration. Madgett, the local coroner who helped the ladies cover up the drownings of their husbands, finds himself on a small raft, alone at sea. The most harrowing game for any man: reckoning with himself. He cannot swim. "Life and death are just things you do when you're bored," sang the great John Cale in his song "Fear is a Man's Best Friend." It's a state of in-between we're almost always in. Unless we give in to something completely. It is not a game.

CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 575 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 577 ⫸

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Drowning by Numbers is a 1988 British-Dutch film directed by Peter Greenaway. It won the award for Best Artistic Contribution at the Cannes Film Festival of 1988. It was released on September 10, 1988.