Quote:
I know one fact about this didactic director, Peter Greenaway—that he is a painter—and that is all I need to know. Everything falls in to place. He composes every frame, meticulously, based on the fundamentals of classical design and structure as if any frame could be snatched from the reel and hung at the Tate. This is the art of cinematography, and he is a master.

A summary of A Zed and Two Noughts, or most any Greenaway film would be like briefly describing the Sistine Chapel—and it takes the Big Book to do that. This film is a lesson in dichotomy: life/death, birth/decay, everything and nothing. He reminds us that our own redemption lies in the cyclical aspect of nature and the blending of these universal opposites into the dizzying blur of existence.

A Zed and Two Noughts—ZOO—is a rich feast for the universal food chain. It begins at the end, meaning, the beginning of the end for its characters. In a freak accident (swan vs. automobile), the 2 passengers killed are the wives of two brothers who work at the Zoo: Oliver Deuce, an animal behaviorist, studies the lives and habits of animals; Oswald, a microbiologist, studies the variety of life forms that thrive upon death. The brothers obsess on their tragedy and attempt to comprehend its meaning in their individual ways. Curiosity about the processes of their science, once so clinical and removed, now fascinates them to the point of morbidity. Everyone and everything is subjected to analysis, until they themselves are finally sacrificed. In watching, we ponder the elusive qualities of existence, see the cosmic concepts of opposition, played out through the recurrence of black and white—”Is a zebra a white animal with black stripes or a black animal with white stripes?”—which pass through the spectral arc and end in the murky ooze from whence life came.

This film is not illustrated text—the storyline merely forms the foundation necessary to understand the images and concepts Greenaway presents. He uses his characters as they use each other, a means to dissect the world in order to understand it. Greenaway is not a storyteller in the common cinematic sense; rather, he has made manifest the adage “a picture paints a thousand words”. Not that the dialogue is unimportant—everything here is important—but it more provides guidance for the viewer who is used to being “told.”

We are provided obvious clues: the brothers’ names both begin with “O” and their surname is “Deuce”; later, as it becomes more difficult to tell them apart, we discover they are twins. The crash survivor whom they come to both love and torture, Alba Bewick (the swan that caused the accident was a white Bewick) loses her legs, and she is juxtaposed by a bizarre seamstress and bestial storyteller named Venus de Milo (rendering her symbolically armless). Greenaway makes us consider common things in new ways, which is the proof of any artist, in any medium, whose work lasts over time.

There is no sentimentality here—Greenaway is not Renoir. He deconstructs the world and reorganizes it through his lens. He shows us in vivid detail how simply we are all the same; how quickly and easily we, the highest life forms, become the fodder of the lowest. This is high-calorie food for thought, presented in a dazzling, decomposing buffet that both attracts and repels us. Nothing pretty here, but this film is stunning, frame by frame, layer by methodically decaying layer.

2.73GB | 1 h 56 min | 960×576 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/BE5B4441CDCEE37/Peter_Greenaway_-_(1985)_A_Zed_and_Two_Noughts.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English

The post Peter Greenaway – A Zed & Two Noughts (1985) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Germany in the early 1930s. Against the backdrop of the Nazis’ rise, Hermann Hermann, a Russian émigré and chocolate magnate, goes slowly mad. It begins with his seating himself in a chair to observe himself making love to his wife, Lydia, a zaftig empty-headed siren who is also sleeping with her cousin. Hermann is soon given to intemperate outbursts at his workers, other businessmen, and strangers. Then, he meets Felix, an itinerant laborer, whom he delusionally believes looks exactly like himself. Armed with a new life insurance policy, he hatches an elaborate plot in the belief it will free him of all his worries.

2.07GB | 2h 1mn | 960×576 | mkv
http://nitroflare.com/view/8002BE5EC6C6445/Rainer_Werner_Fassbinder_-_%281978%29_Despair.part1.rar
http://nitroflare.com/view/6EEE66C3C077C63/Rainer_Werner_Fassbinder_-_%281978%29_Despair.part2.rar
http://nitroflare.com/view/03B19D8F95CF4D0/Rainer_Werner_Fassbinder_-_%281978%29_Despair.part3.rar

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English

The post Rainer Werner Fassbinder – Despair (1978) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Summer of 1922.
Photographer Norman Harris and Niki are sailing to America aboard the same ship. Norman in first class and Niki in third, together with some 700 other brides. They all carry the photograph of a bridegroom they have never met in their little trunks as well as their bridal gown. Norman is touched when he sees the brides in third class. Niki is the one who makes the greatest impression on him. Gradually they get to know each other and fall in love. Brides is a story about strong emotions, about dilemmas, about conscience, about a responsible attitude. It is about the little moments, the glances, the touches, the “yeses” an the “nos” that count in life.

Executive producer: Martin Scorsese

2.12GB | 2h 03m | 720×576 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/61B783E96EC47B7/Nyfes_AKA_Brides__Pantelis_Voulgaris__2004.mkv

Language(s):Greek
Subtitles:English,French

The post Pantelis Voulgaris – Nyfes AKA Brides (2004) first appeared on Cinema of the World.