Peter Greenaway's companion piece to his Nightwatching about the painting of Rembrandt's Night Watch. This is Greenaway himself, using clips from the film and new footage of the cast of that film, to tell the story of the painting and the mystery it contains. I have no idea how true the murder plot is, but Greenaway makes a damn good case for it. He argues that Rembrandt arranged the people in the painting to reveal the plot the militia leaders had contrived to kill one of their own. He also used it to expose the hypocrisy of the members as well. He takes us through 34 of some 50 plus points in detail telling us what he thinks it all means. As I said earlier I have no idea if what he says is true, but I'll go with it as a possibility.

What also shines in this film is how Greenaway makes you rethink how you look at a painting. We are not used to seeing paintings as the artists and patrons of Rembrandt's day were so we don't see the references that were put there. We also get bits and pieces of history that bring the painting and the time it was painted alive. Its so informative I really wish that someone would turn him loose and let him do a series of film on art and art history.

This is an amazing film.If you're like me you'll want to watch not only this film but also Nightwatching again. After several misfire films Greenaway seems to once more have hit his stride with his two Rembrandt films.

Peter Greenaway's brain must be a strange place - gifted with an amazing visual sensibility and an ability to convey that to an audience, but cursed with odd mental processes which translate a good deal less effectively.

This film involves Greenaway himself as narrator as he visits Rembrandt's Night Watch painting from a forensic point of view with the intention of using the content of the painting to unravel the crime whose story is told in the painting.

I don't have the vaguest idea whether there is any truth to this, or even whether the characters in and around the painting are who he says they are (or even existed!). It could all be complete and utter balderdash.

But it makes a fascinating movie to watch and, on that basis alone, I count it a success.

If you're wondering whether or not to become an art historian, watch this film to help you make the decision. You will either be inspired or realize that art history is not for you. Greenaway examines Rembrandt's painting to such an intense degree that it can seem ludicrous or amazingly astute. He identifies 34 so-called Mysteries about the painting and explains his theories about these mysteries.

I personally found many of his theories far-fetched but was fascinated that someone would go the extent that he went in analyzing a single painting.

He has his big fascination for the 1600s and his movies have many times been composed like a painting from the time. Both the arrangement of actors, the light and the color.

This time Greenaway seems to have taken the full consequences of it and presents the story behind Rembrandt's "Nightwatching" as some kind of detective plot. Cynical, brutal of course and with lots of naked bodies.

But there's mannerism in it now and letting the actors use a body language and way of talking like it was today, has this time stopped functioning. Greenaway is now in desperate need of renewing his arrangements, his lights and his colors. We are slowly having enough.

Greenaway's documentary companion piece to NIGHTWATCHING, and it shares the same problems. Some parts are very interesting, others throw far too much information at you at once, making it exceedingly hard to follow what Greenaway is getting at. There are also several inferences and leaps of logic that seem like "stretching it" to say the least, but I suppose that's part of critical analysis. While it's extremely impressive that Greenaway has put so much thought, time and effort into interpreting a single work of art, he doesn't succeed in making his obsession contagious.

5/10