1987 Greenaway movie
Rating: 16/20
Plot: An American architect putting together some sort of exhibition for an Italian architect deals with stomach issues and a possible nervous breakdown whilst in Rome. Or some other city in Italy. Don't quote me on the Rome thing.
I believe I read this was an attempt by Peter Greenaway to make something a little more mainstream, but the random appearance of a character who goes around chiseling the noses off a statue makes that seem unlikely. This has your typical Greenaway aesthetics--great cinematography (Sacha Vierny), careful symmetry, lots of references or imagery having to do with the human body, a score that sounds like it was composed by Michael Nyman, in this case not a score by Michael Nyman. Brian Dennehy gets a chance to both shine and show off the titular belly as the lead, likely chosen because he's the American actor who came to mind first in a stream-of-conscious word-association game when Peter Greenaway said "rotunda" to his casting director. Dennehy's always great, and he's great here in a role that puts him in nearly every scene.
As always, Greenaway proves he's a whole lot smarter than me and that I shouldn't be allowed to watch his movies anyway. Sorry, films. Greenaway would probably call them films, maybe with a capital F. They're Films. Allusions to Sir Isaac Newton and WWII history may have gone a little over my head though I was clever enough to realize that the final shot makes a connection to one of those. Of course, somebody who has trouble understanding The Goofy Movie might have been able to make that connection.
My wife isn't home right now, and I miss her and am not in the best of moods. Forgive me for this poor writing.
This is also a clever ploy to get anybody Googling "Peter Greenaway" and "The Goofy Movie" to my blog. You probably saw right through that one though.
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