Drowning by Numbers

Dir: Peter Greenaway

1987

*****

Peter Greenaway’s Drowning by Numbers is an extraordinary achievement. It is a wonderfully dark comedy that is half oil painting and half puzzle. It’s also  reminiscent of a fairy tale and feels like it is rooted in folklore but there is so much going on, I can’t pretend to understand each and every reference. The film's plot centres on three married women - a grandmother (Joan Plowright), her daughter (Juliet Stevenson), and her niece (Joely Richardson) - each named Cissie Colpitts. As the story progresses, each woman successively drowns her husband. Bernard Hill plays the coroner, Madgett, who is cajoled into covering up the three crimes and Jason Edwards plays his son Smut. The structure, with similar stories repeated three times, is fairy tale-like, most specifically like The Billy Goats Gruff, because Madgett is constantly promised greater rewards as he tries his luck with each of the Cissies in turn. The link to folklore is further established by Madgett's son Smut, who recites the rules of various unusual games played by the characters as if they were ancient traditions. Many of these games are invented for the film, including: Bees in the Trees, Deadman's Catch Hangman's Cricket and Sheep and Tides. In Drowning by Numbers, number-counting, the rules of games and the repetitions of the plot are all devices which emphasise structure and symmetry. Through the course of the film each of the numbers 1 to 100 appear (apart from the number 19. Apparently this is because it is impossible to score 19 in the game of cribbage), the large majority in sequence, often seen in the background, and sometimes spoken by the characters (I think I only recognised this by number 57). According to the director, there are 100 things beginning with the letter 'S' in Smut's room and, 100 things beginning with the letter 'M' in Madgett's room. On Greenaway's specific instructions, the film's musical score by Michael Nyman is entirely based on themes from the slow movement of Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante in E flat, bars 58 to 61 of which are heard in their original form immediately after each drowning. The Skipping Girl in the film (played by Natalie Morse) who counts the stars reaches number 58 in her counting game. This was said to be a subtle way of drawing attention to the key bars of the Mozart piece. It is a production to be marveled at, and one where all of the elements of the film contribute to the structure and design of the piece as whole, where form and content perfectly integrate into each other. The women who drown their husbands, at first do it out of anger, then out of disappointment, and finally out of "solidarity", or in other words for no real reason at all. The pattern of threes needs to be complete, three murders, three autopsies, and three funerals. We know the husbands will die, they are as inexorably fated to their turns in the plot as all people are fated for death, as films are fated to end after a certain number of scenes. We are made hyper-aware of these numbers because they are flashed in a countdown on screen. In a sense, we are all drowning by numbers and there is a beautiful absurdity to it. The moot of the film can be summed up in a line that Smut says: "The full flavour of the game Hangman's Cricket is best appreciated after the game has been played for several hours, by then every player has an understanding of the many rules and knows which character they want to play permanently, finally an outright loser is found and is obliged to present himself to the Hangman who is always merciless". It is definitely a film that deserves repeat viewing; the first time for story and the second time to take in the amazing detail. What astonishes me most about the film is how quickly it was made. Greenaway made The Belly of an Architect, Drowning by Numbers and The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover consecutively, releasing one film a year between 1987 and 1989. Each film is a technical masterpiece, the sort of production that would take most modern directors years and years to complete. It won the award for Best Artistic Contribution at the Cannes Film Festival of 1988 – which it deserved – but I think it deserved a little more than that. Plowright, Stevenson, Richardson and Hill are superb and clearly understand Greenaway’s vision. Every shot is beautifully composed and nothing short of exquisite, with many mimicking some of the great lesser known Renaissance paintings – mostly of Italian origin. Greenaway’s film, particularly of this era, seem to connect through detail and theme, indeed certain props can be seen from his earlier films which I’m sure is intentional. It is an indulgence for sure but one that is open to everyone to get lost in. It’s a masterpiece and Greenaway is a genre unto himself.