I recently had a chance to view Peter Greenaway's latest film, Rembrandt's J'Accuse, an experiment in documentary filmmaking, historical research, and academic lecture, at Film Forum. It embodies all of the cinematic elements that I usually regard with extreme aversion: historical reenactment, numerically defined vignettes, video layers and their subsequent animated entrances and exits through the frame, and shadowed text. And even though this film is laden with these normally distracting attributes, I couldn't help but fall for it completely.I'm aware that Greenaway's style largely relies on the heavy use of the visual techniques that can sometimes seem cumbersome, even corny, but he also manages to use them stylistically and meaningfully, giving each frame a lush, robust quality that relies on this excess to achieve its impact. In the case of J'Accuse, I grew to enjoy, perhaps admire, his disembodied presence, delivering a professorial, wordy analysis of the famous painting in question, The Night Watch, painted by Rembrandt in 1642. Reconstructions of the events leading up to the creation of this painting are cleverly enacted within elaborately detailed settings.
The film takes an Errol Morris-style investigation into this richly textured painting to which I've never given much thought. The persuasive nature of Greenaway's well-researched findings brings the painting and its history to life, filling its audience with a sense of wonder, mystery, and accusation. And the manner in which he uses the normally distracting intersecting and overlapping imagery give this film a forensics-based credibility, exposing its every detail, proved painterly intention, and logic.
Though I wouldn't recommend this film to the easily distracted or the impatient spectator, Rembrandt's J'Accuse is among the most vibrant of Peter Greenaway's films, excellently combining art, technology, and documentary.
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