A Zed and Two Noughts (7.7/10)

Peter Greenaway, 1985.
A large white swan causes a car crash near a London Zoo leaving two women dead and forcing one lady to have her leg amputated. After the accident the husbands of the deceased, who happen to be twin brothers, develop an intense fascination with the decomposition of living organisms. They spend their days making time-lapsed films of rotting animal corpses which carefully show each stage of natural decay.

It is interesting that David Lynch and Peter Greenaway both initially started out as painters and gradually evolved into making films. Lynches first film was an attempt to create a ‘moving painting’. It is evident that Greenaway composes each scene in the same manner as he would approach a blank canvas. The most noticeable and intriguing aspect of his composition, is the way he manipulates proportion and balance within the frame to create a unique spatial relationship.

The cover shows a still photo from the movie where the two brothers are pretending to be conjoined twins watching a dead zebra decompose on an outdoor screen. The red construction line is the vertical axis at the mid point of the frame showing the screen perfectly centered, yet the central axis of the brothers position is shifted slightly to the left. This theme of slightly distorting the overall balance of the scene is not only evident throughout the film but is present in Greenaway’s other films noticeably; The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (7.0/10).

Jan van Eych, Arnolfini Portrait, 1434.

Greenaway’s aesthetic is heavily influenced by the paintings of the Dutch Renaissance. Van Eych’s painting is probably the best known work from this period and is an obvious starting point in trying to understand Greenaway’s composition. The painting has a clear vertical axis shown as the red construction line at the mid point of the frame; however the husband and wife are not in perfect equilibrium. The circular mirror which is the focal point of the painting, and the chandelier are centered directly on the axis but the joined hands are slightly off. I am not sure why Van Eych did this when he could have easily centered the hands on the vertical axis by slightly outstretching the wife’s arm. This minor asymmetry gives the painting a pleasant sense of ‘lopsidedness’.

Gerrit Van Honthorst, Margareta Maria de Roodere and her Parents, 1652.

Gerrit Van Honthorst, The Match Maker, 1625.

Gerrit Van Honthorst, Musical Group on a Balcony, 1622.

Gerard Van Honthorst, another Dutch Renaissance Painter also illustrates this irregular equilibrium with his three paintings; Margareta Maria de Roodere and her Parents, the Match Maker, and Musical Group on a Balcony. In all three paintings the red construction line is the Y-axis, centered at the mid point of the canvas, and the yellow line is the actual line of symmetry in the painting. In each case the paintings actual line of symmetry is shifted slightly to the right away from the frames midpoint axis. This skewed sense of symmetry could be a reaction against the strict humanist rules of Italian renaissance art and architecture, which were strictly based on the proportions of the perfectly symmetrical human body. One explanation is that the distortion of spatial balance is an attempt for Dutch Artists to separate themselves stylistically from their Italian counter parts.

The obsession with symmetry is personified in the character of Alba Bewich, the lone survivor of the accident. The plot would have worked just as well if she simply broke her leg, or badly sprained her ankle. The reason Greenaway specifically made her lose a leg, because it made her asymmetrical. At the end of the film she has her other leg amputated in a drastic attempt to restore symmetry or in her words, “because it looked so sad all alone”.