Nightwatching Reviews

Since I had this movie already for ages on dvd (I bought it maybe 4 years ago), I thought it was really time to watch the damned thing. On top of that, even though I have always been intrigued by Peter Greenaway's work, I think it had been been at least a decade since I had seen anything directed by this guy. I remember it very well, almost 20 years ago, I saw 'The Draughtsman's contract' and it was one of those very defining moments in my life of movie watcher. I had never seen anything like this before and I thought it was one of the most beautiful and spellbinding thing I had ever seen. Of course, this movie reminded a lot of his previous directing effort and if you were expecting a straightforward retelling of Rembrandt's life of how he ended up making his most famous masterpiece, you will be really disappointed. Instead, as usual with Greenaway, you get something really surrealistic and , to be honest, I had a rather hard time to connect with the whole thing and it didn’t really swept me away like 'The Draughtsman's contract' . Still, it looked really amazing and I was quite impressed by Martin Freeman who (literally) showed some balls here giving so far his best performance.

Rembrandt es contratado para la realización de una obra grupal para la milicia de Amsterdam. En medio del trabajo hay un asesinato y se sospecha fruto de un complot. El pintor va dejando señales de lo ocurrido en la famosa pintura del mismo nombre, símbolos para ser descifrados por el observador.
La película atraviesa momentos absolutamente teatrales y se combina con una fotografía espectacular: pareciera que el director quiere jugar luces y sombras como el mismo Rembrandt van Rijn. Es una película para ver con paciencia y disfrutar a varios niveles.