The Draughtsman's Contract (1982, Peter Greenaway) (Patreon)

70/100

Second viewing, last seen at MoMA in 1999.

One of my goofier film-related pet peeves involves title placement. Can't go wrong by sticking the title at the beginning, before anything has happened, or at the end, after everything has happened. (Though, even there, I think certain titles clearly demand one rather than the other. Would've been a bit silly to reserve, say, Dog Day Afternoon for the closing credits, given that those follow a final scene that takes place at night.) Often, though, the title appears at some point during the film proper—usually early on, I'm not talking about one of those hilariously delayed Blissfully Yours deals—and it makes me irrationally annoyed when that appearance ostensibly serves as a dramatic flourish but in fact seems totally random, unmotivated by anything onscreen. Wish I could think of a notable example, as I see it not at all infrequently. You can just tell that zero thought went into crafting that moment, into making the film's very title resonate, or at the very least punctuate something. And I tend to assume ineptitude, which the rest of the film will then need to rebut. 

By glorious contrast, Peter Greenaway opens his first true narrative feature (The Falls is essentially a mock-doc) with a 10-minute prologue interrupted throughout by credits and culminating with this line and cut: 

Now that's how you do it.

Certainly nobody has ever accused Greenaway of not sufficiently thinking things through. (Rather the opposite.) And the title character here, Mr. Neville, is no less methodical: Having been commissioned to produce 12 drawings of the Herbert estate in as many days, he does not, as I once again assumed he would, complete one drawing per day, but instead devotes the same two hours to each of six locations for six days, so as to keep the light as consistent as possible. (They're black-and-white pencil sketches, but I guess it still makes a difference in terms of shadows.) And the plot, such as it is, hinges upon Mr. Neville's dedication to accuracy, which ensures that his drawings will include a few incongruous or suspicious details planted around the estate by persons unknown (albeit eventually strongly hinted at), in what's sort of a reverse Blowup scenario*. Michael Nyman reworks selected Henry Purcell movements into a busier, more metronomic register that likewise imposes order. And then there's the dialogue, which is archly fastidious in a way that anticipates what Tony McNamara's been up to (in The Favourite and The Great, particularly), but without the disruptive anachronisms. Everything is as perfectly manicured as the gardens Neville painstakingly reproduces. That could get suffocating later in Greenaway's career, but he got the balance just right throughout the '80s and much of the '90s, in part by hiring first-rate actors (here, Anthony Higgins and Janet Suzman; subsequently, the likes of Brian Dennehy, Juliet Stevenson, Michael Gambon, Helen Mirren, John Gielgud—he even beat Spielberg to Ralph Fiennes) whose forceful personalities prevent the films from becoming mired in eclectic minutiae. 

So I dig the movie as a ludicrously polite (and ludicrously costumed—those wigs!) battle of wills that doubles as an examination of the artistic process, with exploitation practiced by both artist and patron. Surprisingly (given what he'd depict in future), Greenaway declines to show us what's implied to be some pretty hideous sexual abuse on the part of Mr. Neville—a decision that, while perhaps laudable in some respects (Mike Leigh's Naked, for example, arguably goes a bit overboard in the other direction, much as I love that film) contributes to a certain dissatisfaction I feel with how The Draughtsman's Contract is, shall we say, terminated. That Mr. Neville receives his just reward feels right, as does the revelation—never quite directly stated—about who orchestrated everything we've witnessed and why. But because we hear about rather than experience Neville's cruelty, and because the executors of his downfall are themselves so thoroughly detestable (Mr. Talmann especially), there's a sense of tragedy that I don't think can be what Greenaway intended. I feel bad for the guy, and I really don't want to. That's Ed, I'm not sure there was a credible solution to this problem, since women in 17th-century England wouldn't have been likely to take revenge other than by male proxy. It's also possible that Higgins is just too charismatic (see also: D. Thewlis).

Still don't really know what the living statue dude is doing here, to be honest. Apparently there was a three-hour cut (never screened, as far as I can tell) in which his presence made more sense. 

* Actually I was reminded of Paul F. Tompkins' joke about the Magic Castle portrait—an oil painting—in which the subject is unmistakably wearing a toupee. "I paint the truth, sir! These brushes will not corroborate that lie upon your head."