Review of The Baby of Mâcon (1993) by Patrick-Thomas G — 29 Sep 2009

The thing that you must consider when watching the film The Baby of Macon is that it isn't just another disturbing film, its delivery and cinematography are masterful to say the least. The set design is also quite good, the only thing against it is the content. Like most of director Peter Greenaway's other films, The Baby of Macon includes a lot of very disturbing ideas and concepts. The story begins as a play within a play, this concept is so well executed that when watching the movie it is very hard to understand what he wanted to convey as real and what is supposed to be the play.

The story begins in the village of Macon, a town that is plagued by famine, pestilence, and barrenness. Suddenly like a light coming out of the darkness a fat, old, and ugly woman from the town miraculously gives birth to a baby boy. Immediately afterwards the womans daughter imprisons her mother and claims that she had the boy by means of immaculate conception. She exploits the previously joyus event by selling the blessings of the child to the weak and weary townsfolk. Now as a brief aside, the acting in this film is very well played both Julia Ormond and Ralph Fiennes are amazing in this film and hit most if not all of their marks.

At this point in the film the Catholic Church feels that they must intervene because someone claims to have a holy child, is making a profit, and is not cutting them in! The Bishops Son played by Ralph Fiennes is sent to prove that the young woman is indeed not a virgin and is in fact a blasphemer. The Son who is a believer in science and is a religious skeptic doubts the validity of the daughters story. She attempts to convince him that she is indeed a virgin offering him her virginity stating that if he were to enter her, his prick would be covered in blood. Before he is able to consummate this strange sexual union the supposedly holy baby commands a bull to kill him and it does. The Bishop arrives to find his son gored to death and the virgin covered in his blood. The blame for his sons death falls squarely upon the shoulders of the virgin daughter.

The Bishop takes custody of the baby of Macon and the Church begins to exploit him and the town on a far grander scale than the daughter previously had. The daughter decides that the best way to deal with this betrayal of the faithful is to quietly suffocate the baby to death. Then the church sentences the girl to death, but since she is a virgin they cannot legally kill her outright. So the Bishop instead sentences her to be raped 208 times (not a very fun scene to sit through). Then the church dismembers the babies body and sells the remains as religious relics. The film ends with plague, pestilence, and famine once again falling upon the poor people in the town of Macon. This film is good, but is a huge bummer.