The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover
At a glance...
- Directed by Peter Greenaway
- Released in 1989
- Runtime 124 minutes
- Watched at home
- Final feelings: blew me away!
Took a few days to digest this one, just a perfectly constructed visual and narrative experience. A movie like this immediately gives the viewer the impression that every single piece was meticulously constructed and justified. Everything has so much weight, so much intention, from the colors of the lighting and outfits to each crude and barbarous joke, the deliberate camera movements, THE PAINTING in the background of the restaurant that always gives the uncanny feeling of judgement, judgement from the ghosts of what we might now call elegance, or class, or distinction, which then become the members of the jury by which Spica is executed at the very end! By that point, my jaw dropped and I felt sick to my stomach. Disgusting, grotesque, beautiful, haunting, I just want to watch this movie for the first time again and again!
Random thoughts: I feel like I have seen lots of movies try to capture the alien culture of the upper class, to varying effect. One movie I was reminded of while watching this was Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, which, with my modern eye, felt like a pretty shallow application of the "rich people do weirdo shit that's vaguely old world in origin in exclusive clubs together and its all sexual debauchery" aesthetic. The Cook et al., on the other hand, felt so much more graphic and grounded and it hit me so much harder for that reason. Maybe its just that I see a very horizontal set of an old style French kitchen and I kinda lose my shit.
Something I am still thinking about in this movie is how rage and anger flows through every fiber of the thing, like if I had it on a VHS cassette it would burn my hands to pick it up. Obviously, Spica is a raging abuser who needs no elaboration, his anger is the clearest and drives every other part of this story like a bloody, beating heart. Georgina (I almost typed Georgie, I'm so sorry) carries a deeply sequestered and cold resentment that painfully contrasts with the few instances of agency she gets to have as a character. But something I am starting to appreciate more is the hate and spitefulness the cook holds for his overlord. The futility of his situation leads him to feel so disconnected from his craft that he does nothing to oppose Spica even as his behavior directly harms the civilian bystanders (side note: Yelp would have destroyed this man's career). He merely offers empty verbal jabs, content to simply hold the thief in contempt, spurning the safety of the actual guests who ought to be his whole reason for existing. In this way, Georgina and Michael become a small act of resistance for the whole kitchen, which leads to what might otherwise be a comical hide-and-seek rom-com situation.
It all works because of how enormous and gargantuan a villain Spica is. In a vacuum, all the truly villainous shit this guy does might seem excessive to the point of pornographic in a movie (it had an X rating in the US? How did Americans even watch this thing at its release?), but having seen it, I don't think the final bite would taste as sweet without all the build up leading up to it.