Nightwatching (2007) User Reviews

Mannered and Dull

[GeneSiskel · 5/10 · 16 November 2008]

This film, which I saw yesterday at a single, sparsely attended 4:00 p.m. show, part of an AFI European film festival, may thrill Greenaway fans, but a broad cross-section of movie lovers will probably find it mannered and dull. Shot Rembrandt-style, it apparently aspires to be an homage to art, to the 17th century artist, and to his early-modern eye for humanity -- the cinematographer keeps coming back to, and lingering over, eye shots -- combined with a detective story, a psychodrama, a domestic drama, a costume drama, a self-conscious allusion to the director's earlier dramas, and a brawling, lusty slice of Low Country life in the era when kings waged war with parliaments, city walls were just starting to come down, and commerce was beginning to muscle aside the gun as the engine of empires.

The film badly needs editing. Everything that happens when a camera is turned on is not necessarily art or even interesting. The 144 minutes I saw would have benefited had they been shrunk by nearly an hour. First kill all of the improvised scenes. Then kill all of the gratuitous sex scenes and needless expletives. Then kill all of the scenes in which an actor talks directly to the audience. Then kill all of the precious, mannered references to other Greenaway films -- statues played by semi-nude actors, sides of beef hung out to dry, etc. etc. Tighten up the detective story. Lighten up the art analysis. Minimize the posing scenes. Voila. You'd be at 90 minutes without any problem.

Not for the uncommitted or the faint of heart.

A movie that could be framed on a museum

[acnovo · 7/10 · 27 December 2013]

I'm really amazed with the work Peter Greenaway did in this movie. I have seen most of his films and this one is now my favourite. It's impressive the way the made every frame a moving Rembrandt's painting. This is pure art cinema. The story is told in a creative way, you can understand the clever mind of Rembrandt, follow his steps in his life focused on his most famous painting "The Night Watch", it could be a "slow" movie but the way "Rembrandt" tells the story makes it smooth; dramatic, funny, and smart. I could frame this movie on a museum. The "Holland" world is perfectly shown, the costume design is superb; every single detail in the movie takes you to 1642. To appreciate this movie you must know who Peter Greenaway is and understand why "cinema" is the 7th art.

Rembrandt his Life and a bit of Nightwatching

[mrcibubur · 6/10 · 4 January 2010]

Although this is a dull movie overall and very slow paced, I have watched it through a couple of times and i did enjoy it. Not sure what message peter Greenway is trying to convey (I haven't seen his previous films) and I am not knowledgeable of the Rembrandt paintings. I suspect Greenway recognized a story in this one and went for it. There is nudity and sex acts performed but none more so than Dorian Gray. All works of art even by Shakespeare in literature and as with the Nighwatch, what this film tells us in 16th century life, are commissions; was Rembrandt really painting with any true freedom? The film is sponsored by the Uk Film council, lots of fine British actors appearing such as Martin Freeman, but I didn't get the connection with Poland and the involvement of the Polish film Insitute. the 'murder' (or military accident) ? was integral to the story of the film and Rembrandt purposefully includes 'him' in the painting to the exclusion of others who had supposedly commissioned the painting in the first instant. the film doesn't reach any great heights and is definitely one to watch on DVD, not at the cinema and perhaps in stages when you are in the 'mood' for it. Might pay special attention to check the painting when I am next in Amsterdam.

The Inner Eye and the Lover's Lens

[tedg · 10 May 2008]

In a way, Greenaway is my touchstone for deep film experience. It was with him that I first studied the things that have since become part of every viewing experience, from "Godzilla versus the Sea Monster" to the more homeopathically transcendent meditations of Medem and Ruiz.

Each film is its own adventure, and that's part of the joy. Each film is similar in reaching for a context outside of the ordinary context of other films, so it helps if you are knowledgeable about the dynamics of those contexts. Which of those that are more natural to you will color which of his films you prefer.

I like his "book" films the best because I had prewoven worlds that he just happened to encircle. All of his looping narratives and playing with discrete objects, events and relationships strung and structured capture me when they are prominent. I'm not crazy about his projects when he drifts toward conventional narrative as he does here and away from engaging in conceptual play.

This is more like "Draughtsman's Contract" or even "Cook, Thief" than his more complex films, so many people will like it. Its also his prettiest film since he lost his long time cinematographer.

If you don't know this film, its a simple fold: its about Rembrandt creating a painting with deep, Greenaway-like meaning. The filmmaker goes to great lengths to visually make his relationship to the film be similar to Rembrandt's with the painting, and thereby fold us into the thing because we see and hear (in great detail) viewers of that painting react. And they punish our painter much like the filmmaker has been.

Threaded throughout is a rather touching story — not unique in Greenaway — of a man and passion, and the woman and then women he loves. And how passion and love, and creativity encompass one another and drive that energy of life that we count on artists to use to break mountains ahead of us so we can pass.

Its the women here. It is always the lovers who allow creativity, who grow it and channel it. There is no real penetration of life without it, and the night it brings. Just on the straight narrative alone, its powerful. It works. The whole thing works, and could be a theatrical success for a wider audience than usual.

The three lovers are redheads, of course.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

Sadly, Martin Freeman is a poor Rembrandt

[tim-764-291856 · 7/10 · 10 February 2012]

This long and beautiful film from Peter Greenaway about Dutch master Rembrandt has his hallmark as-art, framed set pieces, exquisitely lit and presented, as though they were the original masterpieces themselves. It is both breathtaking and immediately demands attention.

Though not a real follower of art or artists, I certainly can appreciate this film and as a photographer I can really understand the aesthetics and compositions. It's true to say that I didn't follow every nuance of every scene as it seemed to get very involved. Therefore, I won't go into the ins and outs myself, as I wouldn't want to mislead.

However, what I found lacking was Martin Freeman's lack of emotional depth and whilst he genuinely looks made for the part, he cannot convey the anger without simply shouting. He seemed to be able to only change his state of emotion by voice alone and even then, he lacks the finesse needed. And, whilst the virtue of having framed still art-pieces pleased the eye, a continuous chain of them, with the camera not moving (but characters in them, were) lead to a wish sometimes for more visual fluidity.

I also found the profane language jarring and unnecessary. I'm not saying that the Dutch didn't swear in the 17th century but here it is ugly and as strong as it can get. Shakespeare didn't use such words (I know he's earlier) and I'm sure alternatives could have been found. The quite strong sex scenes are more easily accepted for obvious reasons.

All along though, despite what I have just said, it was a privilege to be watching Nightwatching. I probably do need to see it again, to make sense of it all and hope that my pre-conceived prejudices against Mr Freeman don't spoil this too much.

Rich, Beautiful, Moving, Challenging

[tomgraham101-39-39878 · 8/10 · 28 April 2011]

My advice is to first watch 'Rembrandt's J'Accuse', Greenaway's companion film. It fills you in on the background, the characters, the thesis for the conspiracy, and generally sets the scene for 'Nightwatching' itself, which is extremely elaborate and requires a far more prolonged degree of concentration than 99.9% of films being released. Having said that, the film certainly stands alone as a powerful and intelligent piece of cinema that puts forward a contentious and challenging theory about the circumstances surrounding Rembrandt's painting.

Some viewers have pointed out how moving the film is - and indeed it is. But I for one have found ALL of Greenaway's films to be deeply moving. Unlike mainstream directors, he doesn't attempt to tug at the heartstrings, but instead deploys one rich, elegaic, achingly beautiful set piece after another, letting the ideas and associations reach the emotions of the audience. In Greenaway's world, extreme beauty and extreme horror exist cheek-by-jowl - his heroes (more so than his heroines) look for logic and order, and find ultimately chaos and decay - the good go unrewarded, the bad go unpunished - and yet, out of it all, rises a triumphant celebration of life, art, human aspiration, and the possibilities of cinema itself.

If you want a bedtime story about goodies overcoming baddies, look elsewhere. 'Nightwatching', like Greenaway's other work, offers - and demands - much more than that.

Nightwatching

[henry8-3 · 6/10 · 11 March 2023]

Rembrandt, Martin Freeman, is hired at great expense to paint members of the Dutch militia in all their glory. However, the militia's general mistreatment of others and specifically the murder of one of their number, prompts Rembrandt to hint at their treachery in his famous painting 'The Night Watch' much to their annoyance and such that they will eventually look to ruin him.

As with all of Peter Greenaway's films, lighting, colour and staging are all. He is an aesthete and as such the visuals tend to count more than the complexity of performance which makes him very much a matter of personal taste. That said, this is perhaps his most straight forward, accessible piece albeit every scene looks like a stage designed picture in a museum. The acting by most of the cast seems of little interest to Greenaway and it is often difficult to distinguish the motivations, character and actions from one to the next. That said, Martin Freeman is impressive in the lead as a clever, witty, vulgar man - Mozart in Amadeus anyone? - and holds your attention throughout. What is particularly impressive are the scenes with Eva Birtwhistle as his dying and beloved wife, Saskia, which are really very moving. Not for everyone, as usual then, but an absorbing piece looking as beautiful as ever and with a haunting score by Wlodek Pawlik.

Dull and dreary Dutch drama

[johno-21 · 4/10 · 19 January 2008]

I saw this at the 2008 Palm Springs International Film Festival. It's amazing how such a visually interesting film can be so boring. But then the visual interest wears off after a short time as well. Thius is the story of Rembrandt's famous painting from 1642, Night Watch. A costume drama set during Netherland's golden age filmmaker, writer, director Peter Greenaway takes the approach of creating every scene in this film as if it were a Rembrandt painting. The background is very dark with objects and actors geometrically arranged and clever uses of light with a light source from either the side, underneath or back lit to illuminate the scenes in a minimalist way. The scenes are staged like a stage play rather than a film and in fact it is actually a stage play with super large sets on film. Martin Freeman is Rembrandt and is good in the role he's given but the script is so rambling and with modern language that it's like Shakespere on drugs. Freeman is in virtually every scene and alternates breaking the third wall by addressing the audience and inter playing with the fellow actors. His role is oddly one dimensional in that he emotes the same whether he's happy, sad, argumentative, threatened, combative or tender and it really gets old fast. The art direction is beautiful but it too gets old fast. This is also a very noisy film where there may be a scene with a large cast of actors on stage and instead of those talking in the background heard as soft murmur or not at all, they are amplified and almost drown out the main conversation critical to the story. To top off this cacophony of chatter there is often a violin playing at a feverish tempo in high notes that is nerve wracking but at least it helps keep you awake during this dreary Dutch drama. Production design by Maarten Piersma, art direction by James Willcock and costume design by Jagna Janicka and Marrit Van Der Burgt are well executed but can't save this mess. I would give this a generous 4.5 only for the wasted talent that went into it.

Peter Greenaway's best film and my favorite

[Galina_movie_fan · 10/10 · 13 October 2009]

I love Rembrandt's work and can spend hours at the museums or galleries watching his paintings, these myriads of color brown shades, the contrast of lights and shadow that makes the faces of his models mesmerizing even if they don't have classical features, the perfect arrangement and settings of the frames that make his paintings (and drawings, and prints) cinematographic and him - a forerunner of movie making back in the 17th Century. There is warm healing energy that his paintings radiate. I admire Peter Greenaway, the true painter turned film director, the possessor of unique style, the master of exquisite frames, the creator of feasts for eyes, ears, and brains. Greenaway's decision to make a film dedicated to the Europe most outstanding Artist, his life, loves, and his most mysterious and dramatic painting, Nightwatching, proved to be the best Greenaway's film I've seen.

Once I started watching the film last night, I could not take my eyes off the screen. I always look forward to seeing Peter Greenaway's film but Nightwatching is his masterpiece. It is my favorite of his work, and it goes to my top favorite films ever. It is long, yes, 135 minutes but I did not want it to end. Besides being as beautiful as any Greenaway's film, it covers so many subjects and does it so stunningly and brilliantly that it literally took my breath away. It includes a mystery behind the famous painting that the historians of Art have tried to solve for over 300 years, and it paints the canvas of life and times of the greatest Painter ever (yes, for me Rembrandt is IT), in the style that Rembrandt himself would've appreciated, and it succeeds in everything it was set to achieve, first and foremost being enormously entertaining. But the main reason why I LOVE the film, it did something I never thought a Greenaway's film would do - it almost reduced me to tears. I did not know he had it in him - to make a film not only clever and intelligent, sharp and satirical, gorgeous and exquisite, no big surprise here, but also gentle, passionate, full of love and tenderness, divine and earthy, and to make me fell in love with the screen Rembrandt, the flawed, loud, lusty, earthy man (outstanding superlative performance by Martin Freeman, he even looks like Rembrandt van Rijn) as much as I have been already in love with Rembrandt the Artist. It is not just a feast for brain, eyes, and ears but the food for soul, for feelings. How dare some viewers and critics call it boring? There is love, beauty, the blackest darkness, the glowing light, intrigue, mystery, crimes, history, grandeur, compassion, sex, sins, depiction of all stages of creative process and relationship between the Artist and his work, and there is Art of the highest quality in the film. There is so much to talk about; the movie provides endless references to works of Art. I just have to mention how masterfully Greenaway refers to three major loves of Rembrandt, three women he was connected to, was inspired by, and immortalized in his paintings. There is Saskia van Uylenburgh, his wife, the love of his life, his soul mate, the woman whom Rembrandt described his feelings for as "close and dear relative that he'd known and needed all his life" as Minerva in the beginning of the film. Later on, after Saskia's death, there was Geertje Dircx, with whom Rembrandt experienced the intense mostly physical affair, and to whom he had given some of Saskia's jewelry. Geertje can be seen laying on the bed in the same exactly pose as Danae on one of the St. Petersburg Hermitage most celebrated paintings. And then there was Hendrickje Stoffels, Rembrandt's last love whom he'd known since she started to work as a maid in his household in her early youth. Hendrickje sat for the paintings of Flora and Bathsheba among others. At one point, we see her striking the pose of A Woman bathing in a Stream from London National Gallery. I see these references to the Rembrandt art as just a few gifts for a grateful viewer from the hundreds the film has to offer. This is the best biography film I've seen. Nightwatching is the movie that makes me believe in cinema. Everything I ever wanted from a film, Nightwatching has and even much much more. One of a kind, it is a marvel, unsurpassable.

Fairly challenging

[Jeremy_Urquhart · 6/10 · 11 December 2023]

You get to see a lot of Martin Freeman in this, both because he's in just about every scene and also because... other reasons.

It's a historical drama about someone Peter Greenaway clearly has great admiration for, and this film might well be a way of updating that centuries-old art into something that's obviously more contemporary. From what I can tell, he does an alright job, as he usually does, but the subject and story here don't excite me greatly, so I could really only admire the Greenaway-isms and the generally striking way much of it looked.

It wasn't bad, but I didn't love it. It was a little lacking in the music department, at least compared to those Greenaway films where Michael Nyman did the score. So that's also a bit of a bummer...

Fails to do anything but make me sleep and write this comment.

[Whadever · 3/10 · 21 April 2008]

I don't know anything about Peter Greenaway and I don't pretend to be a cinema zealot, but I am very open minded when it comes to movies. I love stories in general and cinema really has a great way to convey stories upon people without having to spell it all out. As the saying goes, an image can say more than a thousand words. On top of this I am an avid Rembrandt fan. Not to say that he's better than anyone else, but as everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion; I will state for myself that I like him better than most other painters. Considering his work is still around, there has to be a good reason for this.

Still... I did not like this movie. Not because I was disappointed by the director or the actors, I'm sure they all tried very hard to make this movie work. Sadly though for me, it didn't. I never fall asleep during a movie, but for this one, I closed my eyes several times. I noticed myself wanting it to be over so I could say I took it to the last minute.

I don't want to label it, but then why would I be posting anything? So I'm going to continue with committing the worst kind of sin:

'Nightwatching' failed to be accurately informative. So it was not a documentary. It also failed to make me laugh or cry or feel any emotion in between, except apathy maybe. So it was not a comedy, nor a drama nor anything in between. There was no action in it, no suspense and no horror and worst of all and contradictory to what you might expect from a movie about a painter; there was barely any art in it either. No scenes with Rembrandt painting or any of his work shown in detail. In over 2 hours of movie, we were treated with 1 analysis of his work during an obscure and darkly lit scene lasting barely 2 minutes.

Besides all this, the title "Nightwatch" is not the original name of the painting. The fact that the painting is called "De Nachtwacht" is because it turned dark over the years. This is an inherent quality of the paint that was used in those days. If you watch this movie with that in mind, some scenes will become obsolete to the point of being annoying.

The fact that Rembrandt cusses with the same 3 words throughout most of his dialogue makes him seem like a defenseless wimp who is powerless to come up with anything else. Therefore removing the option that the entire movie is a tribute to Rembrandt or his work.

If this movie tries to be a shocker, then the makers should realize that nudity has failed to shock ever since it became common in the seventies... Except maybe for an adolescent audience. But then the rest of the movie would undoubtedly turn this crowd away.

As a conclusion I did not tag the 'spoiler' box, because there seems to be no plot to this flick.

Avoidable to say the least. Check it out at your local library if you must, but otherwise don't spend any money on this. You will regret it.

(I don't want to offend anyone that really like this movie. If you like it go ahead! Nor do I want to insult the people that put a lot of effort into it; Next time though, try to make sure your effort joins with a little more sense. So other people can enjoy the fruits of it as well... after all that's what you're doing it for, right?)

One of Greenaways best films

[dbborroughs · 9/10 · 26 April 2008]

Peter Greenaway's story about Rembrandt and the painting of The Nightwatch.

As a huge Greenaway fan I've been disappointed by most of Greenaways films over the last few years. Pillow Book, 8and a Half Women disappointed me. The Tulse Luper films are much better but too cerebral to fully connect to. In all honesty this is the most alive film and most "emotional" film Greenaway has made in 20 years, since Drowning by numbers.(Greenaway makes films that are intentionally not going to make you feel, he wants to make you think). This is thanks to two things, first Greenaways best writing of his career. Here is a film where people interact like real people.They talk like real people, even when they break the fourth wall, they are living breathing characters. The other reason this works is because Martin Freeman (Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead) is so good that he takes Greenaways lines and makes them real. he is of course aided and abetted by the rest of the cast, but ultimately this is a film about Freeman and he makes the most of it.

I really liked this film. I put the import DVD in to check to see how it loaded up (the menus and such are in Russian) and before I knew what was happening I was 45 minutes into the film. The film is so easy to fall into, it unlike almost anything Greenaway has done before. Its also very complex and it was clear that I was missing things. Greenaway has managed to pack the film with ideas and details many of which you can't catch on the first go through, several times I realized I missed a reference or a line earlier on...a second viewing is probably a must.

If you like Greenaway's films its a must see. Its also worth seeing if you like beautiful (it all looks like paintings) and complex films.

One of the best of Greenaway's films.

Pretentious, blustery eye candy

[LCShackley · 3/10 · 8 September 2012]

This was my introduction to the work of Greenaway, and will likely be my last foray into his world. I watched this film because I'm an art lover and enjoy a good mystery. The taglines for this seemingly endless bit of cinematic self-indulgence seemed to indicate that it was a clever murder mystery involving Rembrandt's "Night Watch." If you stay awake, you may actually see about 30 minutes of material related to that plot line. The rest is beautifully-composed, impeccably-lit, lushly-costumed twaddle.

Greenaway takes us from one beautiful shot to the next, giving us many reasons to admire his visual sense, while we scratch our heads wondering why he can't seem to get a plot going. He manages to cram a lot of sex and vulgarity into the story, for whatever reason, but little insight into the "real" Rembrandt or his art. I'm tempted to watch his documentary "J'Accuse," which theoretically delves more into the artistic side of this story, but I'm afraid that I'll just waste two more hours being lulled to sleep by "l'hauteur de l'auteur."

An excellent Greenaway production!

[disconut73 · 9/10 · 17 September 2010]

Once again, Peter Greenaway has created a film that holds your attention, and tells a story in a very captivating way.

What I found most ironic, and what really bowled me over, was how "unexperimental" this film seemed. After his recent directorial forays ("8 1/2 Women" and the "Tulse Luper Suitcases" come to mind), "Nightwatching" will seem unexpectedly boring in comparison. One might anticipate a visual spectacle, an overwhelming of the senses as seems to be Greenaway's modus operandi. The real richness of "Nightwatching" is in the little things, the simplest of details, and the pure joy of watching a master working within a more traditional cinematic framework.

When I think of the impact "Nightwatching" had on me initially, I am reminded of a similar experience when I recently viewed Lars Von Trier's "Antichrist". I was rather caught off-guard by "Antichrist's" lack of overt experimentation. But as someone who appreciates subtlety and nuance in film, I felt my time was well-spent. Plus, there's nothing I like more than walking away feeling as if I haven't been spoon-fed a story, that I've been allowed to use my BRAIN, and fill in the blanks a bit as the story moves along.

I find it doubly ironic that this film was released internationally in 2007, and only recently released domestically in the US (2010), and to lukewarm reviews at best. Greenaway is an artist never to be underestimated, and I implore you to give this film your utmost attention. It's also kinda cool to see Greenaway "geek out" a bit -- he's so obsessed with Remembrandt and all things Dutch, enjoy!

Amazing set design, impassioned acting, but dull and very indulgent.

[secondtake · 19 July 2011]

Nightwatching (2007)

Highly original, deliberately false, playing loose with fact, frankly sexual, and dry and cold. And not very interesting.

It's fair to say very few people will like this movie, even among those inclined to watch it in the first place, even among fans of the director Peter Greenaway. Luckily, there will be those few who will find it so stylized, startling, offbeat, and intense as to love it. It does suggest something brilliant in the pretty murk it also is. And the actors are performing their hearts out, every one of them pushing their emotional limits within the crisp, dry set designs, which are stiff, symmetrical, and stagey. And beautiful.

There is no question this is an "art" film, highly controlled and aesthetic head to toe. The photography has a kind of studio controlled fluidity, not the moving camera of a steadicam or classic Hollywood, but a steady, slow tracking horizontally inward or sliding sideways. This helps keep the scenes alive, a little, but it also adds to the drone of the whole, since the movement is nearly always the same. In a way, the camera is in synch with the sets, which are also similar in scale and proportion throughout, and symmetrical.

What's it about? Rembrandt and his two wives and one known lover (all compressed into one invented time frame). That's not bad material for a movie, but there is also the political intrigue that Greenaway inserts, a confusing and dull affair with vain attempts to mimic (I think) the drama of the Da Vinci code (the book, not the movie). "Nightwatching" has almost a second plot which comes out of a fantastical reinterpretation of the most monumental of Rembrandt's paintings, "Nightwatch." Greenaway as both writer and director became convinced (or at least wanted to create that impression) that a conspiracy was built into the symbolism of the painting, even a murder. (A second disc in the deluxe DVD edition has a documentary exploring this.) It might have worked, but it's just poorly constructed and the writing is willfully obtuse. amidst the larger sexual and social threads of the main plot, this other idea is an intrusion.

What is missing almost completely in this 2 ¼ hour is any sense of Rembrandt the painter. His personality, his personal life, his apparent rebelliousness are all evident, but the artist, and the art, is missing. The one thing this obsession leads to is some crisp photography of the one painting, and though the shots go by too fast, it's revealing to see up close Rembrandt's rough style, which was more and more at odds with the Dutch tendency for detail (a direction Vermeer typifies a couple decades later).

For people familiar with contemporary theater, this is it on film. It looks great and has passion. But it's just not very interesting. The writing is strained, and the ideas thin. Most of all, it's indulgent. A lot of talent squandered.

If you are interested in Rembrandt, forget about it

[hhfarm-1 · 2/10 · 13 June 2010]

The jacket looked intriguing: the mystery about "Night Watch". Cool. Learn a little about Rembrandt/ his work/ the time period. It's none of that. Not even close.

It's just more of Greenaway's tedious theatrics. It's all talk. No action; no discovery; no story; nada. Multiple characters talk simultaneously so if you were trying to follow the story you could not. And as with all plays each character talks as if there's no one else around.

The 1st half or so is a lot of gynecological detail, childbirth, and crying children. Greenaway supposedly likes strong women so perhaps this is how we're brought into that viewpoint. There's lots of sex talk (and some simulation).

Freeman struts around w/ modern manners, speech, gestures, attitudes - much as if he's on the "Love Actually" set or in some kind of 17th-century gangster movie. The accents are Brit (posh & low), Irish, Polish, Canadian, more. Yeah, who cares? But this is a heavy costume drama so you'd think there's be some consistency.

Toby Jones - the only decent thing about it - is wasted.

So it's really horrible but the best part is that you don't get away with one of Woody Allen's 87 miserable-minutes. This is 2+ hours. And that's not fair anyway: this is way worse than any of Allen's low.

Fascinating, brings Rembrandt alive

[oOgiandujaOo_and_Eddy_Merckx · 8/10 · 19 January 2012]

Briefly, the plot of Nightwatching is about Rembrandt's uncovering of a conspiracy during his painting of his most famous work the Night Watch. Just as importantly it's about the three loves of his life.

I've tried to review this film in the context of Peter Greenaway's directing career as it's pretty critical to my appreciation. As much an artwork as any film itself, with a director who has had a long career, is how all the artworks come together as a ghost of their creator. The power of women over men is something that Greenaway has always reflected on in his films, and in that context Nightwatching represents a mellowing of his gaze. Always fascinated by women destroying men or cuckolding them in some way, Greenaway has made a film where the central character of the painter Rembrandt lives amongst women, and whilst often bewildering to him, they are companions. There are remnants of the past style at the beginning of the movie where during a family meal all the women in the room chant together, "Contemporary women are permitted to smoke, write, correspond with Descartes, wear spectacles, insult the Pope, and breast-feed babies.". The result here is charming as opposed to alarming. A far cry from "Deadman's Catch" in Drowning By Numbers (1988), a catching game where players are successively handicapped for missing catches, and finally wrapped in a winding sheet (traditionally used for corpses) when they lose. The women escape unscathed, perfect catchers, people that exist in some sort of harmony with life, who can find a place and a rhythm. In Nightwatching women still have that rhythm but they don't end up murdering their husbands! On the other hand Rembrandt does have to defend Hendrikje Stoffels from the advances of the callow and the licentious, and women, though with this rhythm are victims of men rather than succubi.

Another echo is a reference to cuckoldry, when Rembrandt discourses on how Potiphar was a cuckold who, "...slept with young men in order to avoid the temptation of his wife trying to screw Joseph". Apparently the Jewish tradition relating to Potiphar related in the Talmud, is that Potiphar bought Joseph as a catamite. Rembrandt learnt this from a rabbi friend of his, an interesting fact in a very well researched movie.

I've seen many Rembrandt drawings and paintings in museums, but I never knew that he had actually produced a small number of erotic works, which is something that Greenaway draws out in his extremely ribald Rembrandt. A fierce critic of Rembrandt, Andries Pel, who despised Rembrandt's realism, in 1681 wrote of his females nudes, "...the traces of the lacings of the corsets on the stomach, of the garters on the legs must be visible if nature was to get her due.". Rembrandt's fascination with this sort of thing is again picked up on by Greenaway.

When I went to the Rijkmuseum in Amsterdam and stood in front of the Night Watch, I very much felt that the men in the painting were poseurs and dandies and that I had no interest in the painting because of this. That though was precisely Rembrandt's point, and Greenaway really helped to bring the painting and much of his other work alive. Something that Greenaway has said about this film is that Amsterdam for a time in the 1640s was a place of unregulated wealth gathering by a handful of civil dynasties, similar to modern Russia.

I felt that in line with what I'm saying about mellowing and maturity, the choice of composer Giovanni Solamar, who is far less famous than frequent collaborator Michael Nyman, follows along the same trajectory, the music is far less flashy, but somehow full of confusion and elegiac tones, more consistent with a film from an older and wiser filmmaker.

I felt that I could connect with Rembrandt's grief at the death of his wife Saskia, and that there was something quite special about that. Despite the fact that Greenaway manages to build scarce suspense around the uncovering of the treachery that Rembrandt seeks to expose, I think it's a film that I will remember forever, with several, to my mind, iconic scenes. I think it helped immensely in my taking in of the film that Martin Freeman looks so much like Rembrandt, especially with the care and attention the hairdressers heaped upon him, something that's quite critical when you have a man so famous for self-portraiture.

Good idea, ruined by pretentiousness

[mike-c-b · 2/10 · 13 August 2020]

I'm a fan of "classy reality" and I'll take the time to see every film that is done in this style... however it's pretentious in all aspects - except for a few individual acting performances.

The lead male character is completely unlikeable. Like homer simpson but without any redeeming features. Always relies on others to pick him up again... and you can see he/the character/actor is doing it for show, it doesn't look like he's "trying his best given the circumstances". He is acting purposefully weak for attention. Later, aggressive for fun. This sort of person is a villain and deserves all the pain he gets. So trying to make the audience feel anything for him breaks the movie.

All the other acting performances, including the camera being tricky in some of the sex scenes also ruins the reality aspect, and therefore the movie.

This movie should be about people doing their best to be happy given the times they live. Sex & food are the two main "delights", so they should be seen actually being happy, not coward, passive aggressive.

Makes My Eyes Happy

[KenLampton · 9/10 · 2 March 2010]

My wife and I are film buffs, not professional movie reviewers. But both of us had strong reactions to Nightwatching.

My wife's reaction: Nightwatching put her to sleep. My reaction was, I think, I bit more nuanced.

In my opinion the world needs more movies about the 17th century. And it wouldn't hurt to have more movies that are intellectual rather than sensational. Therefore, I was delighted to find Nightwatching on the shelf at Premiere Video in my M-Street neighborhood in Dallas, Texas.

Nightwatching is a visual delight. The sets, the costumes, the way the scenes are lighted in the manner of Rembrandt's own paintings, all these elements of this movie were delightful to me. And Martin Freeman's acting made Rembrandt's prickly, flawed character leap right off the screen into my heart.

Although this is not a film that could ever be a commercial success, I thank Peter Greenaway and his collaborators from the bottom of my heart for making it. I will view it again the next time my eyes want to be happy.

Murder, He Doodled

[NoDakTatum · 2/10 · 21 October 2023]

Controversial film maker Peter Greenaway tackles a conspiracy theory he believes was painted into Rembrandt's masterpiece "The Night Watch", and succeeds in making this critic hate all that art and stuff. Rembrandt (Martin Freeman) is a famous painter living in the 1600's Netherlands. He is married to Saskia (Eva Birthistle), a relative of his agent/manager, and his house is a never ending chaos of servants, debauchery, and noise. Rembrandt is asked to do a group portrait of the Amsterdam Militia. The soldiers jockey for placement in the painting, when one of them is killed in an "accident." Rembrandt soon learns this was no accident, and paints his conspiracies and accusations into the artwork, turning a simple group portrait into an indictment. Wow, rereading the plot summary, I would want to see that movie, too. Instead, what writer/director Peter Greenaway gives us is a boring scattershot film which cannot decide whether it is a biopic, a thriller, or a work of experimental art itself.

Freeman is expertly cast- if he was playing Keith Moon. Greenaway shows us a vulgar, crass, drunk, uncouth, and unlikable Rembrandt who quickly grates on the nerves with his behavioral excesses. He is a genius, so his conduct is constantly excused. Emily Holmes, Eva Birthistle, and Jodhi May play the women in Rembrandt's life, but thanks to Greenaway's stilted direction, his servant/mistresses become interchangeable. I was not a fan of Greenaway's breakout "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover", and Greenaway stiffly directs this film in the same manner. Most of it is stagebound, save a few exterior scenes, but the subjects are placed far from the camera (as if in a painting), and the viewer will have a difficult time differentiating between who is speaking and who is being spoken to- and I had a big TV to watch this on. Greenaway is in such a hurry to make the film that he never involves the audience, speaking down to the viewer who must go online to research all the names brought up. While a lecture on fine arts is about as interesting to me as auto mechanics or agriculture reporting, I gamely watched this all the way through, waiting to care about someone onscreen. The big conspiracy that Rembrandt exposes in his painting is based on nothing more than gossip and hearsay, and we must take Greenaway's word on everything while he does everything in his writing and directorial power to frustrate the audience. What we have is an overlong, gimmicky exercise in theatre, highlighted by Greenaway's penchant for nudity. After a while, all the bare skin in the world doesn't make any of this more understandable. Pretentiousness is sometimes mistaken for boldness, but "Nightwatching" is simply pretentious, no mistake about it.

Essentially for Greenaway admirers, but a little more appealing to the general audience than most of his work

[harry_tk_yung · 29 March 2008]

The playin with light and shade in the opening scene is distinctly familiar, reminding me of the meat packing house and truck in auteur Peter Greenaway's classic :The cook, the thief, his wife and her lover" (1989) (and, incidentally, a Helen Mirren that is very different from her latest screen persona of HM QE II). Throughout "Nightwatching", this mesmerizing visual trance persists, set in the seventeenth century Dutch Golden Age. And there is Baroque background music to match the mood.

To those whose only awareness of the name Rembrandt is that it belongs with the same group as Van Gough (as is my case), this movie is informative, perhaps even instructive to the extent of its contents that are not fictionalized. Told in somewhat unusual fashion, Nightwatching is the story of the legendary Dutch painter from it zenith of fame and fortune to eventual decline. Somewhat unusual in that at various intervals of the convention linear story, there are interjections of the protagonist soliloquizing, talking directly to the audience. Nearly soliloquizing, I should say, because the subject matter of each of these scenes is someone important to his life, who appears beside him and makes sparodic responses. Most prominent of these are his wife Saskia (Eva Birthistle) and his romance/erotic liaisons Hendrickje (Emily Holmes) and Geertje (Jodhi May). There are also other scenes with similar distinct flavour.

The title role belongs, however, to Rembrandt's most famous painting, "The Night Watch", which is arguably also the most controversial. The movie recounts in great detail how this work is commissioned by the Amsterdam Musketeer Militia, not really soldiers but an exclusive social club of a group of influential merchants. What started out as a lucrative professional and artistic, but otherwise ordinary undertaking turns ominous when one of the merchants dies, purportedly as a result of an accident. Upon discovering that there is possible treachery and perhaps even murder, Rembrandt used his elaborated painting to make an accusation, through subtle hidden clues. The revenge attempts of the accused eventually led to his decline in fortune.

His other misfortune, from a more natural cause, is Saskia's failing health and eventual death. While his sorry is genuine, it does not take long for him to seek solace, in succession, in two servants: erotic, vulgar Geertje and young, modest Hendrickje. The three women's distinct quality – intelligence, sensuousness and innocence, respectively – are well portrayed by the three actresses.

Martin Freeman's portrayal of Rembrandt is a man of immense talent but unrefined character that can be almost described as bawdy and licentious. Whether this is true to history or not, it makes good dramatic appeal. With a fair amount of focus on the murder mystery, Director Greenaway has made this, his latest film, more appealing to the non-art-house audience. The two-hour-plus adventure into Greenaway-land however would probably be still a bit too much for the audience at large to take. Greenaway admirers, needless to say, will ensure that they won't miss "Nightwatching".

New angle to everything you know about Greenway and... Rembrant?

[melnikovi · 8/10 · 21 April 2008]

Not as visually complex as 'Prosperos' Books', not as intriguing as 'Draughtsman's Contract', not as innovative as 'The Suitcases', 'Nightwatching' is however a little of everything and, of cause, more.

There are references to the earlier films, most obviously - to the 'Contract', the latest are so strong that sometimes one may think it is a deep 'remake' of that earliest Greenways' work.

While the presentation is generally easier-going then in some previous films, it does not mean loss of depth and loads of small details (for which the film deserves a HD version - something to appear, probably, in the year 2107?). Like all Greenway films, this one to be watched many times to discover new and new layers.

The historic plot is doubtful however neither naive nor unrealistic. And most likely it is just a canvas to put the ideas on: which present in numbers.

lost in paint

[SnoopyStyle · 5/10 · 13 April 2020]

It's 1642. Famous Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn (Martin Freeman) is painting one of his most well known work, The Night Watch. He soon discovers a murder conspiracy among his rich merchant backers and incorporates it into his painting. He accuses them of murder causing indignant outrage.

The production is often done in the style of a Rembrandt painting. I'm lost. I can't follow these people. They just talk and talk and talk. It's reminiscent of Peter Greenaway's earlier movie "The Draughtsman's Contract". I have the same reservations for both movies but this one is more problematic. The movie should center on the conspiracy and the conspirators. Instead, it's centered on Rembrandt. I don't know who's who or what's what. I have no map to this movie, just a painting. Also, the act of painting can be very compelling. He's not painting. This only comes alive when he unveils his painting and it loudly fades away with a baby's scream. Rembrandt is not a compelling character in his own movie. The conspiracy could have been compelling.

A Bizarre & Uncomfortable Art Film

[angel-clare · 9/10 · 20 August 2013]

Want to watch a pre-Bilbo Baggins Martin Freeman engage in graphic (but exquisitely artistic) sexual foreplay or sit in a latrine populated by fifty semi-naked sweating men? Look no further than this bizarre and uncomfortable art film by genius bizarre and uncomfortable art filmmaker Peter Greenaway (who has directed other such bizarre and uncomfortable art films as Prospero's Books and The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover).

Despite its many bizarre and (more) uncomfortable aspects, Nightwatching is an utterly brilliant piece of artistic filmmaking. Martin Freeman portrays famous Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn as he plots and paints the work known as "Nightwatching."

Every single frame of this film could stand on its own in any self-respecting art gallery (though, of course, some of the more bizarre or uncomfortable stills would have to be displayed in certain, hidden, passageways); indeed, some of the film's scenes have been structured purposefully to evoke or mimic some of Rembrandt's own work.

But of course, with its graphic nudity and sexual antics, its latrines, and its strange symbolism, it cannot help but be defined as a bizarre and uncomfortable art film; only, emphasise the "art" aspect of the genre.

Where is Rembrandt?

[prelibation · 1/10 · 17 December 2022]

Luckily spared from this bit of a porno flick. It is amazing that such garbage can be considered (by some) a serious movie.

I know nothing about the director (Peter Greenaway) and this is the first film by him I've watched. In fact I do not care at all who the director (or the actor) is and try and judge the work only by its merit (or by the lack of it...). The only reason I've watched this film is my admiration of Rembrandt's works. This film did not diminish my admiration, but left me with a bad taste in my mouth (and headache from all the shouting).

The film "Rembrandt" (1936) by by Alexander Korda certainly has it flaws, but still shines after over 80 years - especially when compared to this c__p.