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The Baby of Macon – 1993 Greenaway
- Is “minor” Greenaway but only because the narrative is so weak- it’s so splendid visually and distinctively Greenaway—even defiantly so- he clearly doesn’t give a rip
- Julia Ormond’s first film (Legends of the Fall), Ralph Fiennes’ second film, and the last film for Philp Stone (the shining, clockwork)
- Banned from distribution in the US- it’s a Greenaway film so there’s a ton of nudity and he’s a provocateur for sure with the content
- Odd Oracle opening
- Avant-garde, literary and an absolutely loaded mise-en-scene—certainly aggressively stylized

- The first 20 minutes absolutely kills any momentum for the narrative- it feels stage-bound (way more than his previous work). There’s an audience, so there’s reflexivity (like the opening of Olivier’s Henry V (1944)—a very good film), with jeering (even applause and bows at the end)
- You almost have to ignore the plot (and it’s a struggle) and let the visual ambition wash over you over the 122 minute running time—it’s still a marvel of set design
- The chess board set piece and rolling tracking shots that emulate a moving painting more than like most cinema—awe-inspiring stuff

- The décor is loaded with red, royalty and blood—golds as well
- Tough to watch ritual rape and execution
- Operatic at times
- Candles, feasts, ornate and opulent designs
- Another exercise in cataloging from Greenaway—there’s math (literally counting the abusers on the chessboard-like black and white surface) and ritual (with the Ormond rape)- we also have a ritual death and the eating of another person like the cook the thief her wife and her lover
- I can’t say it’s a revelation for either Ormond or Fiennes- those revelations would come in 1993 for Fiennes with Schindler’s List and Legends of the Fall for Ormond in 1994
- Recommend but not in the top 10 of 1993
Drake2020-07-03T10:30:42+00:00
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This is a wild one — perhaps best described as the document of a snuff play being staged in the 16? The enclosed play concerns a hideous old woman who gives birth to an improbably beautiful son. The woman s virginal daughter (Julia Ormond) passes off the child as her own, and proclaims him a messiah-like miracle. He is worshipped for a time, but eventually, the people turn against him and his mother. This rather simple story is lavishly obfuscated and complicated with director Peter Greenaway s usual baroque treatment. The sets and costumes are spectacular and, as always, there is plenty of frontal nudity (yup, Ralph Fiennes shows his wee-wee). Three particular scenes are grotesquely violent and bound to turn off many viewers, but if you can get past the first few minutes — where a naked, twitching, undead lunatic sputters some opening lines so laboriously that you won t even understand all the words — you ll probably be able to stomach the rest of the film without any real trouble.
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