The Kingdom of Shadows

While I will admit on the whole, that I enjoyed the playfulness of A Zed & Two Noughts, I object to Peter Greenaway's work on the whole (or the two films of his I've seen). I'll describe my some reasonable and some unreason reasons for my mixed feelings about this film, and let the reader decide.

The first thing that really got me against Peter Greenaway, was that I thought that The Pillow Book, was essentially about how Greenaway wanted to have sex with a Japanese woman, but I'll leave that for another review. The second thing I dislike about Greenaway is the fact that he is one of the favorite directors of Res magazine. I met their founder once, and have held a high distaste for the magazine ever since, and everything that constitutes "digital culture," (including blogs). The third reason is that I find a fixation on "kinky sex" rather annoying, and Greenaway doesn't seem to make movies on anything else.

On the other hand I find obsessions with death, and strange music rather nice.

The plot revolves around two twins, who work at a zoo studying the decomposition of animals. They are both in love with a woman who loses both of her legs in (different) accidents, the first one involving a swan. There is a woman who works at the zoo, that is particularly mean and has a "thing" for animals. In the end (I'll give it away) the twins discover they used to be attached, decide to sow themselves back together, commit suicide, and record themselves decompose on a time lapse film. All the characters particularly liked the song "The Teddybear's picnic."

There were some other little bits of the story, but I think you can get the point.

What I particularly like about the story is the concept of scientifically studying something with absolutely no scientific meaning (studying the decomposition of flesh as a way to know the difference between life and death). The main characters are concerned with something that I think most people should be concerned about - the abstractness of death. Also, the main characters were concerned with the subject in the way that one should be concerned with such a subject - abstractly. In that way "The Teddy Bear's picnic," was really the perfect song for this film.

But the amputee sex and bestiality was all a bit silly.