Heavy baggage
Dylan Young
Peter Greenaway's The Tulse Luper Suitcases packs a wallop
The era of the film auteur is over. Godard, Bertolucci and Kubrick all fell hard on the pomp of their early successes, and seemed to fall out of touch with the changed sensibilities of our times. And the Americans like Coppola, Scorsese and Altman haven't fared much better. The new guard - Soderbergh, Cassel, Van Sant, Breillat, Jonze, Gondry, von Trier, Campion et al. - aren't really doing anything with the medium that hasn't already been done.Looking at Peter Greenaway's career, it's easy to understand why so many clever directors have stayed on the straight and narrow. Greenaway has done the opposite, and it hasn't won him many admirers. The Welsh-born director, painter and author is now frequently viewed as a mad genius, moulding Frankenstein creations at the margins of his chosen fields. The reality is somewhat mundane, but perhaps more impressive - the man is trying to innovate.
When Greenaway first came to international attention, it was with The Draughtsman's Contract, a film that bent the English Reformation-period narrative around a philosophical exploration of the contractual arrangements between people. He literalized the effect, having his characters draft actual contracts to delimit their sexual entanglements and murderous exploits. In that film, Greenaway explored the "word and letter" with the attentiveness of a scientist. Subsequent films would apply a similar eye to other themes (food in The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and Her Lover, books in The Pillow Book,
theatre in The Baby of Mâcon etc.). Along the way, Greenaway's already much-embellished treatments became less narrative and his frame-in-frame and fade techniques more expressionistic and visually complex, often to the distraction of his audiences. Greenaway's latest creation is his strangest and most ambitious to date. The Tulse Luper Suitcases is a three-part, seven-hour exploration of the nuclear age from dawn to zenith. The three films were originally screened months apart, at festivals, and include a baroque array of multidisciplinary tie-ins, all of them driven by a whisper-thin narrative and the metaphor of a collection of 92 suitcases - a world painted in lists and inventories.
On a cellphone from his home in England, Greenaway speaks with an easy, fluid precision that thoroughly evokes the linguistic manipulators in his own films and, like them, fills his speech with so much meaning and information that they threaten to overwhelm the listener's faculties.
Peter Greenaway The Tulse Luper Suitcases is in part a manifesto project because it argues all those things we're all aware of about cinema being on the change... away from the celluloid, ending up probably in our front rooms, with a manifestation which has got more to do with interactivity and ideas of multimedia.
It's not just a project for the cinema. It's a project for television, for DVDs, certainly the World Wide Web and also for looking over our shoulders into more classical areas: books, plays, hopefully operas. So, it's deliberately meant to associate with those ideas which cinema alone can't really deal with.
Cinema is a passive medium [that], I would go so far as to say, died on the 31st of September when the zapper or remote control was introduced to the living rooms of the world.
Hour That's an alarming idea.
Greenaway My big push, irritation and anxiety over the last 10 years is that all our media are text-based and not image-based.
We have all these great pretensions about cinema being handed down in image, but most film directors are visually illiterate, most audiences are visually illiterate and I sincerely believe we should try to do something about this. There's obviously a big connection between what you see on an opera stage, what you see at the cinema stage and what you see on a webpage. And I want to be able to draw the connecting lines between the lot.
Hour Audiences will find Tulse Luper a rough experience. The film loads each moment with a tempest collage of images, words and sounds, oversaturating the senses.
Greenaway I don't think we need to say "over," do we? Saturated is enough. So, the film is liberated from the tyranny of narrative. The audience can sample from the film as they do in life. The film is many experiences.
Hour Fair enough. But if it's so demanding to watch, why would anyone bother?
Greenaway Why would anyone be interested in the Sistine chapel or a Mahler symphony or a fantastic work of architecture? I'm not saying that this is the same sort of thing but the intention is there. That should be interesting enough.
The Tulse Luper Suitcases
| ..grand kudos to peter and his sweet madness: |
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...i loathe the common complaint from narrow minds about how such-and-such film didn't make 'sense': several weeks ago at cinema du parc i overheard a conversation where an art-geek looking man was moaning to another art-geek looking companion about how david lynch's brilliant lost highway made no sense to him whatsoever and how he couldn't understand why lost highway was considered one of lynch's best works:
his comment belies the constant resistance by the viewer to remain deeply trapped and lost within that necro-d0gma of 'plot': a conspiracy of s0-called 'experts' to bullet point the traditional three-act format that must be observed to the letter of the law or there can't exist any 'cohesion' -- but peter greenaway nailed the problem without flinching: many directors behind the camera and many viewers have fallen deeply illiterate in the sense that the mind of viewer and director have become lazy by a format of storytelling that has become what newtonian physics have become to the quantum physics -- the thought that atoms held a definite mass and shape and orbit has been smashed by the theories and works of quantum physics to free physics from the proposed 'laws of nature' created by d0gmatic minds assured that such laws of nature remained removed from violation and ultimately change....
i will take disagreement to peter greenaway about the death of cinema as a passive medium occurring with the introduction of the zapper: the entirety of the 20th century has been nothing more than an attempt to liberate cinema from the shackles created by a hierarchy of narrow-minded individuals whom sat in judgement over the criterias of 'art' when 'art' has always been an evolving ritual and not a passive medium that the artist uses to express his or hers will -- this disagreement applies to dylan young's asinine assertion that the era of the film auteur has died when the current crop of brilliant films easily proves the auteur never dies but learns and then evolves.
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Gary Womac
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{64 votes}
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| THE TULSE LUPER SUITCASES is for acquired tastes only |
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Yes, in case some of you are still scratching your heads over the accompanying picture *that is* Montreal's very own starlet (that got unceremoniously screwed by the FOX network) Caroline Dhavernas who just a few months ago graced our TV sets with her sublime dramedy WONDERFALLS. She performed in the first installment of Peter Greenaway's THE TULSE LUPER SUITCASES series.
Not that this article actually bothers to mention this fact but hey, I figured someone ought to show some hometown pride for a talented girl who made good.
Asides from this tiny nitpick I've got nothing contrary to say about this piece, it's well written, informed and quite solid. I'd personally dispute the whole "era of the film auteur is over" thing as I'm of the belief that it's not so much over as in a state of evolution. Frankly, the medium has changed and so has the audience so you can't grade things as you once might have.
Peter Greenaway's THE TULSE LUPER SUITCASES won't reach a vast crowd and won't impress many but if it did it wouldn't be a Peter Greenaway oeuvre. He's just not the sort of filmmaker that goes for the commercial knockout.
You've been warned.
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Pedro Eggers
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{32 votes}
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This is a director who is not out for the money but for his creation. He knows not evrybody will like his style but he has a mission and that is to create what he feels. Most directors strive to be a success in the box office and maybe recieve an Oscar. But like a painter with an empty canvas Greeaway is painting his picture.He tries to go beyond the simple task of filming to creating techniques that have yet to be researched or understood.He is your scientist of film makers and believes that even cinema must evolve or it will die because immense competion and constant choices , but sadly without change. He believes there must be change or people will loose interest as easy as flicking the channel!
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Maria Cecillia Silva
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{1 vote}
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| the largest canvas film maker |
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peter greenaway is not only a filmmaker.his films are a gigantic canvas for art, photography
and music.his films are are always rich and complex works of art.they demand attention and concentration on the part of the viewer.this film/series appears to be no exception to that rule.his films require repeated viewings in order to obtain clarity.in doing so, you will be rewarded with color, richness and imaginination. the multi-layering images of images will bowl you over.don't blink during films, you'll definitely miss something.
emotions are another factor that run deep in his films.as in "the belly of an architect" and ''the cook, the thief,the wife.." you may feel good, sad, sick, elated or any other range of emotion. but,you'll have to watch...............
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Mario Vaccariello
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{2 votes}
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| Not for the fainthearted (or fidgety) |
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Greenaway must be the master of weird, way above David Lynch, higher than Polanski, Greenaway has pushed boundaries and explored the barren wasteland throughout his career. His films are all difficult viewing - these are not Hollywood plot-thickeners but real gritty or downright strange movies that will make you think, may make you bored but, above all else, will challenge you.
I love The Pillow Book and The Baby of Mâcon was also very interesting, but I have to really be in the right mood to dedicate my time and self to Greenaway's work as they are so draining, and if the time is not right his films become annoying instead of absorbing.
The Tulse Luper Staircases certainly sounds ambitious and I'm really not sure that I feel like sitting through 7 hours of his artistic 'manifesto', and I am sure that even those who are interested in his work will find this a rather daunting prospect.
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Ellen Reid
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{19 votes}
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| Hey look, it's Caroline Dhavernas! |
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I know it's a stupid question but why is there no caption for the Caroline Dhavernas picture on the website when there's one on the paper? I just find it odd.
I'd imagine that a lot people probably log on than pickup the paper and they're pretty much in the dark as to who the lady in pink dress is. A lot of people might be more prone to see Greenaway's The Tulse Luper Suitcases if they knew some local talent was in it. I'm not much of a Greenaway fan but I do respect a lot of what he's accomplished.
Wonderfalls is sadly over so it's nice to see her face again.
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Vladimir Joseph
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{24 votes}
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