Kiers (Kiers77) There is no need to hate this movie. It's quite enjoyable by itself. It doesn't require any heavy intellectual digging or background instruction manual to appreciate. Plus, it's quirky comedy is being taken as mysterious and dark. Please! Just enjoy it and laugh. The humor is irksome but funny. It's like a bit of Shakespeare. It has meaningful plot and fun dialogs. The guy who wrote the review centering on the Draughtsman's "arrogance and innocence "(a dangerous combo!) had it spot on, and this personality flaw is key to the plot. Thoroughly enjoyable and funny and clever. Architects everywhere, TAKE COVER! LOL.

Jackson Booth-Millard This is the directorial debut of Peter Greenaway (Drowning by Numbers; The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, The Pillow Book), and I found it listed in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, I hoped it would deserve five stars out of five as critics rated it. Basically set in rural Wiltshire, England in 1694, young and arrogant artist Mr. Neville (Anthony Higgins), also something of a romantic hero, is contracted by Mrs. Virginia Herbert (Janet Suzman) to produce 12 landscape drawings of the estate of her absent and estranged husband Mr. Herbert (Dave Hill). Part of the contract agreement is to meet with Mr. Neville in private, and to comply with his requests for the purposes of drawing, such as when servants and residents will not be present and obstructions will be removed during his sketching. Also Mr. Neville's contract agreement includes his pleasure, several sexual encounters follow between him and Mrs. Herbert, emphasising reluctance or distress for Mrs. Herbert, and showing the sexual aggression or insensitivity of Mr. Neville, while living on the estate he also gains a reputation with its dwellers, especially with Mr. Talmann (Hugh Fraser), Mrs. Herbert's son-in-law. Mrs. Herbert exhausted by meeting Mr. Neville to give him pleasure tries to terminate the contract before all drawings are completed, but the draughtsman refuses to stop and void the contract, he continues as before. Then Mr. Neville seems to be blackmailed into making a second contract by Mrs. Herbert's married but as yet childless daughter Mrs. Talmann (Anne-Louise Lambert), she has become attracted to him and he agrees to satisfy her pleasure, as opposed to his own. A number of curious objects appear in Mr. Neville's drawings, ultimately pointing to the murder of Mr. Herbert, who is found dead in the moat, the twelve drawings are completed, but Mr. Neville returns for an unlucky thirteenth drawing. While apparently completing the final drawing, Mr. Neville is approached by a masked stranger, obviously Mr. Talmann in disguise, he is joined by Mr. Thomas Noyes (Neil Cunningham), Mr. Seymour (David Gant) and eccentric landowner twins the Poulencs (Octopussy's David and Tony Meyer). The company accuses Mr. Neville of the murder of Mr. Herbert, as the drawings can be interpreted as evidence seeing more than one illegal act, he defensively denies these accusations, he is asked to remove his hat, which he does so mockingly, that is when they hit him on the head, burn out his eyes, club him to death, and throw his body into the moat where Mr. Herbert's body was found. Also starring Lynda La Plante as Mrs. Clement and Michael Feast as The Statue. Higgins gives a great performance as the arrogant artist paid in sexual favours, the aristocratic 17th century world looks authentic with great costumes and the beautiful estate, the drawing scenes are interesting, the sexual scenes are good, and the murder plot towards, with the drawings becoming witness evidence, is intriguing, also with great use of minimalist music by Michael Nyman that fit the remarkable visuals, and a witty script, it is a fantastic period drama. Very good!

ianlouisiana When I saw this back in the eighties one member of the sparse audience (not comprising of clever - clever critics,rather mystified filmgoers who had actually paid good money)shouted "What b*ll*cks!"at the screen and stumped out with his equally outraged companion who obliged with a loud raspberry. They had lasted a bum - numbing 40 minutes,enduring the arty - farty posing as art that Mr Greenaway had forced upon them,no doubt hoping to "improve" their narrow,blinkered,provincial middle - class lives by showing the narrow,blinkered,provincial lives of the 18th century English aristocracy as he conceived them. I know we Brits are to supposed to love this sort of arrant nonsense because,after all,we virtually invented intellectual snobbery,and nothing pleases the chattering classes more than that feeling of superiority that ensues from their declared enjoyment of something so clearly b*ll*cks that the lumpen proletariat reject it out of hand.I've now endured this tiresome film three times hoping to "unlock its mystery"as one of my more intellectually - gifted chums puts it. But it still goes way above my head. It's tedious and phoney and,frankly,up its own bottom. In my opinion,that disgruntled moviegoer thirty - odd years ago hit the nail on the head.

chaos-rampant This is like a chestbox full of fantastical treasures, most of them pertaining to image and meaning. An amazingly rich film upon which to ponder cinematically on the hidden realities of the frame.We have the sketch artist at the centre of this, the man commissioned to represent reality. By this whim, he has the ability to empty the landscape of people or place them within it as he sees fit, which is to say the world he sketches is a replica born in the mind. What starts by this process as representation inadvertently becomes creation.But there is more to it. Within his image and unbeknownst to him, find their way various shadowy allegories which may be simple pictorial conceits or keys to a sinister plot involving murder and worse. By having sketched these anomalies of perception, the things that shouldn't be where they are, he becomes complicit in their implied meaning.The most fascinating thing about all of this, is that the film is perfectly aware of everything that transpires in it. It knows and points out that it does as meant to entangle itself in the folds of this so that it can be disentagled again.Tantalizing double entendres (some of the best in film) among politely aggressive dinner companies, an animate statue who unsuccessfully tries to mingle with the routine, sexual inappropriateness as contractual obligation, all these humorous or deviant stratagems mirror the effects of duplicitous meanings.Each of these elements merits a film of its own, Greenaway however weaves them together in a ribald pastiche. Of the pastiche itself I'm not too sure, whether the whole adds or subtracts upon the individual meanings, but it's an enjoyable one.All you need to make cinema in my opinion is not story or characters but a point of view (and of course the view to which it points). Two forms of consciousness, one which is the cinematic representation and the other the navigation within it. This one has several, each working upon the others to make them equally possible or equally moot.By the end of this, Greenaway rather fatalistically shows us the destruction of both creator and creation. At the hands of a spoiled plutocracy no less.