Cheap Belly of an Architect (Video) (Brian Dennehy, Chloe Webb) (Peter Greenaway) Price

Related Products

Customer Reviews of Belly of an Architect

Not a pretty sight
Whether you come to this flick because you admire architecture, dig Peter Greenaway, or love Rome (all of which I do), The Belly of an ARchitect will leave a bitter taste - and not just because the architect in question is suffering from a pain in the gut that makes him spew up nasty bile every now and then. <
> <
>The script is a mess. What might have been an interesting conceit is tangled up in nonsense. All the Italians are corrupt (why they seem to conspire against the hapless American is never clear; if it's merely thievery, why are they so obvious?), the architect's wife is a bit dim, the architect an arrogant American without the sense to ask for an audit when his precious exhibition is being ripped off. But he must be some kind of magician: he can make photo copies even when placing the original right side up on the glass ... <
> <
>Greenaway has managed to acquire amazing locations (the Victor Emaneul Memorial, Baths of Caracalla, Pantheon) and one wishes he had filled them with a compelling story; but pretty pictures don't make a movie, and this quasi-operatic tale doesn't wash. For all the talk of meat and blood, this one is as cold as cadaver.

---

A Romantic In Extremis
Greenaway's "Belly of An Architect" is visually stunning and philosophically entertaining. It is about an idealistic American architect whose life swiftly declines at the precise moment he attains his life's ambition. It is about idealism and the worship of forms in contrast to the flux and chaos of life and death. It is about the eternal slipping through the fingers of mortal man. It is about reaching for the heights and developing stomach cancer.

---

Six Pack Sonata
Peter Greenaway, presently a professor of Cinema Studies at EGS, has said," I really don't think that we have seen any cinema yet. I think that we have seen a 100 years of illustrated text." <
>As a former film editor, he cuts in the camera. He loves long tracking shots, and he usually does them in one take. He will open his scenes in tableau, usually in a long shot, and then he allows it to stir to life. Each frame is a masterwork of color, light, and shadow, and a sumptuous feast of dazzling props. <
> <
>His cinematographer, the great Sacha Vierny, helps Greenaway's cinematic look and style immensily. He has shot eleven of Greenaway's projects. Vierny composes each frame as if it were to be a Pulitzer prize-winning photograph. Two composers, Glenn Branca and Wim Mertens completed the score. This was the first film score for both men. It soared from Neo-classical to jazz; kind of like Nino Rota-lite. <
> <
>After seeing a Greenaway film, I always feel rushed, like I have just run a foot race through the Louvre, as if ten times too much visual information has rippled over my retina, and that my visual cortex has only perceived a tiny portion of it; that repeated viewings are in order. I usually feel ignorant of the many classical, historical, and philosophic references. I feel that I need to read more, study more, think more, and that I wish I were smarter than I am. I feel extremely challenged and vastly over-stimulated. <
> <
>Enter Brian Dennehy as the American architect Stourley Kracklite. He is an accomplished actor, and in this film he was able to grandstand, to perform a one-man show. His bulk and his energy were barely contained in the frame. He seemed to shake those pillars on all those great buildings as if they were bed railings. The movie opens in the heat of a sexual encounter as Kracklite copulates his way into Italy. A minor architect, hailing from Chicago, city of red meat and money. Wide of shoulder, amble of belly, bearded and bellicose, Kracklite swaggered about barking orders. He had come to Rome to set up and oversee an exhibition honoring his artistic hero, the 18th century architect, Etienne Louis Boullee'. <
> <
>Chloe Webb played his young wife, Louisa. He was 54, and she was 24. They had been married for 7 years. She was not very good in this film. She badly needed direction, but Greenaway was not available for such trivial pursuits. Lambert Wilson, known these days as the French rogue Merovingnian in the MATRIX trilogy, played the handsome wealthy Roman architect, Caspasian Speckler. He was rich, arrogant, randy, and deeply dishonest. He would steal Kracklite's life and his wife. He would wrench the exhibition our of the American's hands, and he would witness the man's rapid deterioration with delight. <
> <
>Kracklite was striken with stomach cramps immediately upon his arrival. This turned out to be the demon cancer, blossoming in his colon. He snarled, raged, and thrashed about, but to no avail. Cancer would be the victor. Or would it? He had some other ideas on that subject. <
> <
>Greenaway set up the structure of the film to fit within the cycle of gestion, from conception on the rails to birth during the opening ceremony of the Boullee exhibition. Then he added death to the mix; death coiciding with birth, one making room for the other. This film was not a masterpiece, but it was masterfully constructed. Nor was it a vacuous exercise in esthetics as some critics have labeled it. It is a very good film, filled with plenty of grist and gusto.