Introduction (Prologue)

The films of Peter Greenaway, who is both a film director and a painter, are often dismissed as "difficult to understand," "incomprehensible," or "in bad taste."

Also, his talkative style in interviews and such might be another factor contributing to the feeling of difficulty in understanding his work. Grand themes such as art history, geometry, views on life and death, and the ending of films unfold as they are rapidly combined in a game of association

I think the first time I saw it was at the Zoo and the architect's stomach

With its strikingly beautiful, symmetrical visuals, the persistent insertion of numbers and symbols, and the ruthlessly repetitive minimalist music by Michael Nyman, he has dominated the screen with his own cold, calculating formulas, seemingly mocking the Hollywood system of "easy-to-understand stories and emotional connection."

However, I think it would be a huge mistake to dismiss his films as merely "a cold, intellectual game for intellectuals."

When we gaze upon his most avant-garde and enigmatic works—ZOO (A Zed & Two Noughts), Prospero's Book, and The Pillow Book—we are struck by a remarkable contradiction. It seems that deep within a system rigidly armed with cold, detached order (ornamentation), he hides incredibly pure, almost fragile, human motives (love, values, childhood pleasures, a return to one's roots)

Prospero's Book: What Lies Beyond Cold-Blooded Revenge

Based on Shakespeare's "The Tempest," "Prospero's Book" depicts a world governed by 24 "systems of knowledge" in stunning Baroque beauty. The protagonist, Prospero, uses the intelligence contained in the books to manipulate everything from weather and gravity to the consciousness of others, and unleashes a ruthless "revenge" on those who betrayed him

It's often called a "naked festival," and I imagine many people would say that it's completely incomprehensible to an East Asian person with no background in Shakespeare. Indeed, the screen is filled with intensely grotesque imagery. Also, Wada Emi's lavish and extravagant costumes are overwhelming. Frankly speaking, it's rather excessive in many ways

But where does this ultra-high-density, intellectually charged crime film, which surpasses the processing speed of the brain, ultimately lead?
What Prospero ultimately wanted to achieve, after exhausting all of his powerful magic (system),"protecting his daughter's (Miranda's) happy marriage and future." No matter how vast the intellectual system he tries to reconstruct, at its core is the universal and warm love of family, that of "just a good father." In the end, the film depicts him discarding books and everything else, and focusing all his energy on wishing for his daughter's happiness. Ultimately, it seems to boil down to a simple, human love.

"The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover": Unwavering values ​​for surviving in a chaotic world

Set in a high-class restaurant ruled by an arrogant thief, "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover" is a wildly absurd masterpiece that culminates in the ultimate taboo: "eating human flesh."

The beautifully radical costumes designed by Jean-Paul Gaultier, which change color with each room you move to, strip away the social symbols that clothing implies. Helen Mirren is beautiful and looks absolutely stunning in the costumes

Despite the violence and abusive language, the time spent with Michael at the bookstore feels like a source of comfort for those of us watching

The Holy Communion, a sacred act imbued with both life force and the defilement of death

The act of eating to survive is both the "source of life force" necessary for living, and at the same time, it is the most "deadly defilement (unclean)" act, as it involves killing other living beings, chewing them up, digesting them into a pulp in the internal organs, and then excreting them. I feel that Greenaway uses the restaurant setting in this film to directly connect the beauty of "food and sex (life)" inherent in humanity with the grotesqueness of "decay and cannibalism (death)."

That is why, in the midst of this chaotic nightmare that the cook recounts in the play, the cook quietly speaks towards the end

"Dark-colored ingredients command high prices. Grapes, olives, blackcurrants. People are drawn to things that remind them of death. By eating black foods, people feel like they have overcome death."

Among black foods, caviar and black truffles are the most expensive

Death and birth

The end and the beginning

The fact that black is the most expensive ingredient makes perfect sense, doesn't it? This unique perspective is truly impressive

He fully embraced the inherent impurity of "death defilement" in food from the very beginning, and then logically reconstructed it into the system of exquisite French (couture) cuisine

No matter how chaotic and vile the world may become, I will never let the vitality of food and the aesthetics of death be tainted

Perhaps that tremendous reversal of fortune culminates in the final scene of "eating human flesh," the most defiled yet purest sacrament of revenge?

"The Pillow Book": The "pleasure" of childhood that lies at the origin of art

"The Pillow Book," a project inspired by Sei Shonagon's "The Pillow Book," involves writing characters onto a living body and publishing it as a "living book." At first glance, this work appears to be the epitome of erotic and incomprehensible avant-garde art

Brian Eno handling the music, the unique atmosphere of Hong Kong before the handover, and that crazy, fake-Japanese feel that misinterprets Japan—does that all give it that 90s vibe? I quite like it

However, I think the origin of the heroine Nagiko's persistent pursuit of this act is incredibly pure. Isn't it"the ticklish, overwhelmingly blissful pleasure of having her father write characters on her face and neck with a brush on her birthday as a child"? No matter how sophisticated or complex art may seem, this film seems to reveal that everything begins with the roots of "the pure initial impulses and pleasures of childhood."

'ZOO': A return to the ultimate roots through system hacking

In "ZOO (A Zed & Two Noughts)," twin zoologists who lost their wives in an accident relentlessly document the "process of decay" of animals and fruits using time-lapse photography. They attempt to control the absolute natural systems of "death and time," which humans cannot resist, by confineing them within the camera frame and Michael Nyman's repetitive sounds, and counting them down

One of the things that symbolizes the "inexplicable madness" of this film is the bizarre plot point where the heroine, Alba, is dressed up (cosplayed) to look exactly like a painting by the Dutch master Vermeer. The doctor who tries to cut off Alba's leg in the film is named "Van Meegeren," the same name as the world's most famous Vermeer forger

Apparently, the twin brothers and the forger's true intention was to perform a frenzied embalming (experiment) to forcibly stop death by trapping a living body, which would otherwise rot and decompose towards death, within the order of Vermeer's "painting of light where time stands still forever."

And in exchange, Alba is required to "cut off" her legs, which are in the way, in order to fit herself into Vermeer's perfect composition (system). It is an outrageous act of violence disguised as art, in which the sides of a human body are unnaturally deformed and cut off in order to conform to an overly powerful standard (system) of beauty

At the end of the film, the twins try to record the decay of their own bodies in time lapse. For them, that's not madness.It's the purest ritual of return, returning all the material that made them up to nature and going back to the "zero point before life was born (the ultimate roots)." But objectively speaking,it's still madness, and it's an incredibly bizarre sight.

The image of twins lying naked in front of the camera, surrounded by swarms of snails and insects, is a surreal and bizarre spectacle (black humor) born from its deadpan seriousness. Perhaps this is the very essence of the endearing bug that Greenaway has hidden deep within the system: humanity. I feel a strong sense of purity precisely because it doesn't depict anything idealistic