Review of Rembrandt's J'Accuse...! (2008) by Eric B — 26 Dec 2011

This Peter Greenaway film is heady, dense and intellectually demanding. Big surprise, eh?

Mixing documentary style with recreations drawn from his companion film "Nightwatching" (which is much easier to watch), Greenaway himself appears onscreen to narrate a wordy, PhD-level dissection of Rembrandt's celebrated painting "The Night Watch." Relying on another of his easily parodied "list" structures, the director proceeds through 34 numbered mysteries surrounding the work, offering explanations that may or may not be fully provable (I am not an art scholar, so I'm not the one to ask). As with "Nightwatching," the central thesis is that Rembrandt embedded clues in his painting to expose an elite Dutch militia group's murder conspiracy. And furthermore, that this daring act of rebellion led to his upper-crust benefactors shunning him -- thus bringing about his financial ruin.