Gurlyndrobb While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.
Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.
Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.
Isbel A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.
oOgiandujaOo_and_Eddy_Merckx It was a shock for me to discover having watched several of Peter Greenaway's films, and having loved many, that this for me, is easily his best from what I've seen. I will temper that by saying that I saw this in the cinema, and the cinema does wonders for many films. I find Greenaway's Baby of Macon, for example, has too much detail and visual complexity to be particularly accessible via home viewing. Greenaway has indeed been criticised for an overly painterly approach to detail in his films, which some deem not fit for a medium with a moving image. His long time collaborator cinematographer Sacha Vierny for example considered Prospero's Books a failure for the over-cluttering with visual detail that was cinematically indigestible.The late Sacha Vierny doesn't get talked about nearly enough, other than Belly and most of the famous Greenaway films, he shot Last Year in Marienbad for Resnais, as well as the majority of the famous pre-80s Resnais movies; The Three Crowns of the Sailor, amongst others for Ruiz; Bof Anatomie d'un Livreur for Faraldo, a marvellous though little seen film; Belle de Jour for Bunuel; La Femme Publique and others for Zulawski; as well as collaborations with Chris Marker, Maguerite Duras, and Sally Potter. The critical part he played in these great movies is rarely sung. As Vierny was not interested in fame and rarely gave interviews, how much direction he took and how much of his own artistry he plyed will forever remain an enigma. As with most of this work, The Belly of An Architect is a really great looking film.The story of this film is about an architect played by Brian Dennehy, called Stourley Kracklite, if you can believe such an indigestible name, hinting at gastric stagnancy and duodenal eructations. In consonancy with his name, he spends the movie plagued by sluggish prickly guts. Kracklite has always ired an obscure 18th century French architect called Étienne-Louis Boullée, a real-life architect who was famous more for his astonishing designs than for actual won commissions (this has often been a hazard for architects I believe). Make good use of the internet or your library and look up his magnificently insane design for Newton's tomb, which was never taken up, or his sprawling design for the Bibliothque Nationale. Due to his overreaching ambition he therefore ended up making mostly private homes, and there's only a handful of his built projects left in existence.So Kracklite has finished with making his own buildings, and spent the last ten years of his life planning an exhibition on Boullée to be held in Rome. There are a lot of typical Greenaway features here, obsession with food, cuckoldry, a battle between an older and younger man. Somehow Greenaway managed here to take his usual stuff beyond an academic game to a place where there is mythos, and poesy. Greenaway for me is a director with a deep feeling for lifecycle, he doesn't present children as small adults, or middle aged men as ephebes with jowls and paunches.For me it's a film about lifecycle and meaning, and homage to genius. I just adore it.
severin72 Greenaway's visuals (which betray his origins as a painter in almost every gorgeously composed shot) are sumptuous. Wim Mertens score is mesmerizing. Add them to Brian Dennehy's towering performance as obsessed, betrayed, and ultimately dying American architect Stourley Kracklite and you have something very special. Kracklite is in Rome battling to put on an exhibition to his idol, 18th century French architect Etienne Louis Boulet. His young wife (Webb) betrays him, the natives scheme to undermine his exhibition and he begins to crumble physically like the ruins of the eternal city around him. The story, largely carried on Dennehy's massive shoulders, is almost incidental to the glorious, poetic footage of Rome. It is so movingly beautiful that, when I finally got around to visiting the city (a trip in no small part inspired by this film) the reality of the place couldn't compete. If you can, watch this on a big screen with the best possible suround-sound. If you can't, watch it anyway.
ricardo-delpozo-1 I only can say that Brian Dennehy is not the typical Greenaway actor, but Greenaway gets to work with him in order to take him to the summit of his work. It is over the fat policeman bored of what he does, alcoholic, disenchanted... Here, the American Architect, his wife, the exhibition, the Italian rival, everything is planned, and Greenway's work with actors gets the best performance Brian could ever have dreamt about. Besides, Peter Greenaway has made his masterpiece with this film in my opinion. I saw it for the first time when I was 16 (now, I'm 33) and I got truly impressed, thinking it was the best movie I had seen in my whole life. That is not much to say. Now, at 33, every time I see it I think the very same thing. Enjoy Greenaway's masterpiece!
dmtls This is all about it!A spectacular drama so disturbing to become an "existence thriller".A deep and thorough look into the soul and the brain of a creative (in his very own way indeed) man.Psychosis breaks in, out of nowhere, to this man's mind and cripples his emotions, his thought and finally his life.The order mentioned before is exactly the event line of the film.Dark sides of our mind are brutally exposed and true inspiration appears to be not further than a step or two from madness.Excellent music that can both stand alone and brilliantly combine with the work, is what makes the film a true classic.A must see for everyone with a sense in real art.
