Drowning by Numbers

As beautiful and mesmerising as much as it is idiosyncratic and bewildering. Bernard Hill really was great in this; full of presence and poise. Greenaway's visual style and use of music are right up my street and "Drowning by Numbers" had me transfixed from start to finish. I wonder how many times Wes Anderson watched this film?

Greenaway is clearly a filmmaker who has found his own way (like Bresson, or his hero Eisenstein) to strip cinema down to its skinned bones and build on the gory remains something of his own economy and character. Seeing this in a theater, I once found myself exiled from the frame, seeing its four corners, and it’s the only time a film’s semiotics actually enhanced its performance. Its visual opulence meeting themes of sex and decay and liberation hit all the right buttons.

Greenaway indulges his usual fetishes regarding counting, categorizing and cataloging, and the labyrinthine rules for the various games in the film is evidence of his love for complicated bits of information. But beyond this is a very involving story, memorable characters and performances, some terrific black comedy, and heart-rending emotional moments. Not as difficult as The Falls, nor as grotesque as Cook Thief Wife Lover, I believe this is his finest film, or at least the easiest to enjoy.

Arty-morbid 'delights', if you please.

"Once you've counted a hundred, all the other hundreds are the same."

maybe its because I don't believe anything can standup to Greenaway's The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover, but I found DbN to be flat in terms of its story. Beautiful imagery and setting as usual, though. maybe I'll have to give it another try.

Truly awesome film-making. You feel that Peter Greenaway is sitting behind you, hitting you with a ruler whilst saying: "You're stupid and uneducated, you're stupid and uneducated, you're stupid and uneducated." And that's a good thing.

Who said the countryside life is boring. Peter Greenaway is a photographer and you can see it from his movies: they are colorful, in any kind of way. In this flick you can see his love for numbers. There's three women (or just one), lots of open nudity, conspiracy, blackmail, sex, insects and a numerous other details in both story and picture. I've seen many his movies and this is not actually bad one. Need to rerun the rest of them as well. :7

There is something about Greenaway's style that I love. He has a knack of showing ugliness and beauty at the same time, like the decaying beauty of autumn.

Okay, I've seen this only once (yet) and that is certainly not enough. But it's a quirky, many-layered, both hilarious and sad, visually original and beautiful film that's much deeper than it seems at first glance. It will take at least one more viewing before I'll claim it's a masterpiece, but it probably is. Highly recommended.

Afogando em números estreava há 35 anos no Festival de Toronto. Drowning by numbers indeed. Gosto de como todo mundo no Letterboxd está dizendo que esse filme parece o Wes Anderson com sexo e assassinato, deve ser por isso que adoro o Greenaway e não suporto o Anderson, hahaha Box Versátil A Arte de Peter Greenaway.

The habit of death. Death as a habit. Deadly habit. Habitual death.

Vintage Greenaway again. Incredibly visual, multi-faceted and quite strange indeed.

Totally organized chaos. On the predictability of our species.

Didn't watch past the first 30 minutes or so

I can always COUNT on greenaway. ha ha. ha

(...)Vieles in Peter Greenaways Film ist einzigartig, ja einmalig! Er lebt von der Begeisterung des Regisseurs für obskure Symbole, die manchmal darüber hinwegtäuschen, dass seinen Filmen eine ersichtliche Form fehlt. Ich denke, du wirst Greenaway entweder lieben oder hassen, verstehen aber auf keinen Fall.(...)

Too much stuck in the symbolic and orderly, but one would certainly want to watch it for getting the pleasure of pure symmetry.

May water wash your sins.

And it goes; 1, 2, 3- What the hell are we looking for? And then; 5, 12, 65... This movie is begging for at least (insert number) rewatch(es) or some serious sudoku skills. In all regards, it's a beautiful, painteresque picture which, unfortunately, lacks the motivated storytelling to make it a riveting experience. Aside from the aesthetics, the film also provides absurd, often humorous, situations which plot-driven ventures would never bother with. The Gravedigger's cameo is hilarious.

First hour is hit-and-miss, second is perfect.

I guess I have no proper score or words to estimate this one. At times it is funny and interesting, sometimes it is intriguing and involving. Greenaway has a rich aesthetic charm and imaginative view but I am not going, definitely, to re-watch it again, even for the sake of detecting all of the numbers in the movie.

So ridiculous that Greenaway has somehow become my cinematic ideal, but it happened...

If you don't like this, I'd wager you won't like Greenaway in general.

I need to watch it again...

Not normally a Peter Greenaway fan, but this is very good.

I need to see this a few more times to give an accurate rating.