DROWNING BY NUMBERS

UK, 1988, 119 minutes, Colour.
Joan Plowright, Joely Richardson, Juliet Stevenson, Bernard Hill.
Directed by Peter Greenaway.

Drowning by Numbers is described by its writer-director Peter Greenaway as a sardonic morality play - a poetic, amoral tale told morally to support the belief that the good are seldom rewarded and the bad go largely unpunished.

This film fits into Greenaway's canon between The Belly of an Architect and The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover. Once again it is a sardonic, pessimistic look at human nature, relationships, battles between men and women, the mysteries of death. Also, Greenaway the artist, architect and painter creates visual jokes and codes (here, the sequences being numbered 1 to 100 and the numbers appearing in each sequence). There are also multiples of three - with the three Cissies, three murders, three proposals, three seductions...

The cast is impressive with Bernard Hill as the corrupt magistrate, Joan Plowright with Juliet Stevenson (Truly Madly Deeply) as her daughter and Joely Richardson (Vanessa Redgrave's daughter) as her daughter. There is a supporting cast of English character actors.

The film plays with the audience, tantalising it visually and aurally, creates a puzzle as regards relationships and deaths, but also tantalises ethically, checking whether the audience agrees or disagrees with the amoral stances of the central characters.

As with the title, there are symbols of water and death throughout the whole film. The musical score comes from Greenaway's regular musician, Michael Nyman. The photography is by his regular director of photography, Sascha Vierny.

1. Peter Greenaway's films - their popularity, subject of critique? The intellectual content? Visual content? Interconnections? Codes, symbols, semiotics? The background of architecture and painting? Cinema poetry of an intellectual type?

2. Greenaway and cinema as poetry and as essay? The themes of life and death, sex, fidelity and betrayal, the law, the battle between men and women (relationships, emotions, physical)? The subplot of circumcision and its sadistic tones? The playing of games, rules and codes, winners and losers? The significance of numbers? Counting, mathematics? Biology and science? Evidence and knowledge? And the symbols of land and water?

3. The significance of the number 3? The three Cissies and their family relationship? Influence on one and the other, mother-daughter relationships? Influence in terms of education, guidance for life, advice for murdering? The three Cissies as the three Furies? Fate? The focus on the females, femmes fatale, their treatment of men, children? Their wisdom, foolishness?

4. The title, the drownings? The games played by the characters, especially Madgett?

5. The prologue: the little girl, her dress, her mother, counting the stars, 100 stars, skipping? The introduction to Cissy 1? Smut and his talking with her, the question of circumcision? The police, the risk - and her death? The sudden irony of her death? Her rope killing Smut? The themes of innocence and innocence lost?

6. The joke, apples, sex - Nancy? The romp, the baths, Cissy, watching, the story? Cissy 2 as 34? The drowning, its effect? Cissy 2 with Nancy in the barrow? Going to bed?

7. Cissy 1 and her age of 60? Husbands, fidelity, burning the fork, the blame? The discussion with Cissy 2 about Hardy? Fat, Nancy? The relationship between Cissy 1 and Cissy 2. Cissy 3 and the continuance of the generations? These three women as real? As symbols?

8. The character of Madgett, his place in the town? Eating, sick? The coroner? His love for games? Smut and his interactions with Madgett? The numbering? The hangman's cricket game and its mysteries? The deaths, the coroner's judgments? The funeral, blackmail? His being rejected by Cissy 1? Cissy 2 and her reaction? The burial? Cissy 3 and his advances? Failure? The truth, his trying to take advantage of people? Smut and his work? The initiation of the tug-of-war, its result? Smut abandoning the tug-of-war? The sense of fatality? Going to the boat, stripping - did he die or not?

9. Smut and the key? Wake, games, Samson, counting, the tags? The deaths? The days and the colours, the fireworks, the photos, cricket and death, the animals? Discussion with the little girl about circumcision? His cutting? The death of the skipping girl, the police, the funerals, his abandoning the tug-of-war, the rope and the irony of the game and his death?

10. Cissy 2 and Hardy, the wedding, eating, the cramps? Typing? The sexual relationship, the drowning and the calling of the joggers to witness? Grief or not? Fate?
11. Cissy 3 and sexuality, the wedding, the advances? The plumber? Not swimming? Training and dying? The conspiracy between the three women?

12. The rituals of the coroner? The women as widows? The celebrations of the funerals? Ashes?

13. The conspiracy group, the influence on the other people in the town, collaborating with the women? The meetings at the funeral, under the water tower, the sides in the tug-of-war?

14. The ethical and moral issues? Moral foundation and stances? Amoral?

15. The importance of the visuals and the camera compositions? Animals and insects, food, destruction and decay? The rooms - and the influence of the architect? The symbol of water? The editing, compositions and the atmosphere of Michael Nyman's music?