The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 1: The Moab Story

How can I write something about this movie…as it's almost impossible to write a review about such a film! Get all the other Greenaway's movies, add a doze of Gillian and Lynch and you can get an idea about what this movie is all about it. I think the students that learn about what film editing means, should use this film as the most perfect example. Multiple scenes flying across the screen, multiple dialogs, theater-like atmosphere and a good music score, adds up to create a unique experience! I have to reckon that I had big expectations about this movie, after reading the reviews, seeing the web site related to the whole story, and of course, seeing all the other Greenaway's movies… and I was not disappointed- this film is something that I have waited to see since long time ago: a blend of reality, imagination and a perfect manipulation of movie editing.

Definitely this movie should be seen in the theater, as its just too small for a normal TV-there is so much information on the screen…or maybe if you have a projector at home:)

There are probably lots of `mistakes'(like a very hard to follow script, too many characters...etc) in this film, and many people would not understand a thing, but this is just normal, because there is no other movie that can be compare with this one!

IF you love art movies, and you are prepared to give some `food' to your brain, then see this movie, you won't be disappointed.

Probably, Greenaway's idea of creating this multimedia Magnus Opus would be doomed to a commercial failure, but for the real art lovers, I think the movies created for this project would set a landmark.

10 out 10

The Moab Story is part 1 of a 3 part, 6 hour film tracing the life of the eponymous Tulse Luper and, for reasons not yet clear, the history of Uranium (atomic number 92 - this is important so pay attention at the back).

Greenaway continues to evolve his directorial style, overlapping images and sounds, embedding windows within windows, mixing media. The results are often confusing, sometimes stunning, never boring.

I wondered if Greenaway was hinting that this was in some sense an autobiographical piece. Tulse Luper is cited as the author of 'The Belly of an Architect' and in a list of his lost works appears 'The Falls', both earlier films by Greenaway.

Of course it might just be the director playing games. A clip from 'A Zed and Two Noughts' is used at one point, and there is a character named 'Cissie Colpits', the name of the three women in 'Drowning by Numbers'. I suspect there might well have been many more references to earlier films in there.

This is closer in style to 'Properos Books' or 'A TV Dante' than some of his earlier works such as 'The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover'. Narrative flow has been sacrificed in part for creating a cinematic work of art. Nothing wrong with that in my opinion though, when the result is a film like this. Sit back and let the experience wash over you.

Boy, this is a tricky sonofabitch to evaluate. Tulse Luper is a recurring character in Greenaway's work, kind of a Kilgore Trout to Greenaway's Kurt Vonnegut. And the film makes multiple references to his other works, even citing Luper as their author. And Luper is attributed with having an obsession for categorization and numbering, obsessions inescapably associated with Greenaway's films. But is anything about this truly autobiographical? Is it more akin to Guy Maddin's sense of the poetic autobiography? Or is it just nonsense? Knowing Greenaway, everything in this film is done for very specific (and probably quite complex) reasons. But it's all so elusive and dense with symbolism and double meanings that it's impossible for me to decipher on a single viewing, and I would probably require the use of additional multimedia aids to truly decode it all. Although he hasn't entirely cast aside narrative, it's so shattered by formalist clutter (the literal "frames within frames" as seen in PILLOW BOOK, stylized sets, encyclopedic detail, seemingly pointless use of repetition and contradictory or complementary images) that it's difficult to say "what happens" except in vague terms. As is often the case with Greenaway, it holds almost no emotional resonance (and some of it, especially regarding the Percy character, is kinda stupid). There is no doubt that most would write it off as pretentious drivel. But I found it fascinating nonetheless. It's not the most experimental thing I've ever seen, nor the most unpredictable or surprising. But it's original enough to hold my interest, and it does so with a unique and often beautiful sense of style.

The Moab Story is a fascinating cinematic experiment - it really is an encyclopedic CD-ROM-like film - it reminded me of The Pillow Book and A TV Dante in its presentation. The screen is predominantly busy with informative movement. I watched the film on DVD and the text on screen is small, but I was constantly zooming in on the picture to read it so it wasn't a problem. But the viewing would be enhanced watching it on as large a screen as possible, but having said that it is appropriate for DVD with its interactivity. The project as a whole begs for interactivity with the individual user.

The film begins with showing us actors auditioning for roles, which is also used later. Tulse is a young boy with his friend Martino Knockavelli in the back yard of his house in Newport, Wales. A red brick wall collapses on Tulse and then we progress through history, with war footage in the background. Tulse travels to Moab where he is abused and jailed, and then later travels to Antwerp and faces the sinister Red Fox fascists. Throughout the film a small box with the head of a talking expert inside appears (like A TV Dante) describing the background of what is happening. Characters are noted on screen with name and number when they appear. It was fun reading all of Luper's Lost Films that scrolled down the screen, as well as seeing the other suitcases (suitcases 1 - 21 are featured in this film). It was good to see former Greenaway films - Vertical Features Remake, Water Wrackets, A Zed & Two Noughts, and The Belly of an Architect - referenced and appear. Greenaway is really experimenting here with image and sound, using repetitive sound at times giving an echoing effect. He plays with connecting numbers to draw shapes on screen when Percy strikes Tulse. Sometimes the screenplay is shown on screen after the characters have said it. The cinematography by Reinier Van Brummelen is good. The music by Borut Krzisnik is superb and feels appropriate. In the acting stakes Caroline Dhavernas is the stand out, and J.J. Feild does a capable job as Tulse. It's a film that (like all Greenaway films) needs to be watched several times. I look forward to seeing Vaux to the Sea.

I have three living filmmakers that I revere. Greenaway, of course, is one of them and the most obstreperous of the bunch. I like that he has real problems with making illustrated books and does something substantial out of that.

His fundamental notions of the world are built on overlapping conceptual frameworks, ordered frameworks. In this, he follows the Joycean tradition of "Finnegans Wake," which layered all sorts of frameworks from Kabbalistic, Vican, mythological, even geographic sources. It was all merged according to a dream logic — since we had no other template in that day — and used every lexical and literary device he could muster.

Where Joyce had to make do with dream-layering, our Peter gets to use already familiar web- referenced multimedia overlays. He surely knows how to use the software to extend the art of editing into new dimensions. Wow, just on that score.

And where Joyce used obtuse frameworks with the intent of his book being a life's reading, Greenaway uses obvious overlapping frameworks: numbers, his own life and the mythology from his prior films. Some categories, like the periodic table. Oddly, he hasn't been as thorough in this film as he has in some others: Vermeer's theories of light, animals, sexual stereotypes, the written word, various frameworks of introspection and reflection. Different slices on gender.

Anyway, the point is that where Joyce was esoteric, Greenaway strives to be obvious, though manylayered, even juvenile, in his frameworks. He wants these to be so simple and grand that he can stretch them to many web sites, films, CDs, games, and (I presume) books and installations. Someone can casually enter a part of the larger work and intuit the order of the thing.

Each fan of Greenaway will have to make her own decisions on what she likes in terms of the different balances he has struck. As for me, I want a tighter integration of framework and image than he has here. This is why I value his "book" films the highest.

What does this add to what we have? Sadly, not much, except an attempt to integrate himself and some of the political sweeps of the ordinary world, which he tags to nuclear control. I've often thought that the artists themselves are dumber than the art they produce and the greater distance we have from their personalities, the better.

If you have talked to Greenaway, you'll see this in a flash. He has some good headlines, having to do with the bankruptcy of narrative in film. But beyond that, his films (some of them) soar, while his own spoken narrative crawls.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.