Act of God

I'm not a big fan of Peter Greenaway's movies - they're usually too abstruse, confrontational and willfully "clever" for their own good - but Act Of God is a minor classic, if only because it presents a series of widely differing accounts of what it's like when the unthinkable happens, in this case, being struck by lightning. The film taps into a morbid curiosity that, like it or not, exists in most people, and satisfies our desire to know more about a bizarre 'natural' phenomena. The brief 'sting' of Michael Nyman's typically strident music that divides the interviews is a real brain-bug, and I can still remember it more than fifteen years after I last saw this. As the horror expert Kim Newman noted in his book 'Nightmare Movies', Peter Greenaway is primarily a documentation, and this piece, along with 'The Falls', rank among his best efforts to date.

This is a brilliant short documentary made by the infamous Peter Greenaway for Thames Television program "Take 6" in 1980. For this project, Greenaway tackles the task of interviewing British subjects that have been struck by lightning...and survived to talk about it. The documentary displays Greenaways signature touches, such as the element of Dark Comedy (Greenaways editing, the Monty Pythonesque narrator, the witty writing, that transitory music, and the nature of their stories in general) and, of course, his trademark attention to detail regarding mise-en-scene and framing. First Greenaway gets his subjects to reflect upon their experiences. He also interviews friends, family, doctors and other witnesses whom fill in the blanks where the strikee may have been unable to remember or recollect. He then continues to slowly peel away at his interviewees like an onion, revealing more of their story as he asks them questions, juxtaposing their responses- indulging us in the experience by forcing us to compare and contrast their experiences. Questions such as: how tall are you, what was the first thing you remember after it happened, were you holding anything and what were you wearing on your feet that day? An element of humour is derived from the transitions between questions, in which Greenaway interviews Herzog-like "Experts", while showing how cinematic lightning effects are made, and providing literary/cinematic references to films and great books that use lightning for various effects on what we now know as a "ticker". He subsequently reads old newspaper reports of various lighting strike victims- survivors, deaths, and even bizarre lighting related events- like the guy who would climb a hill every time there was a storm with suicidal tendencies, hoping an "Act of God" would end his life, only to be struck by a vehicle and killed while walking up the hill to get hit by lightning. This is really an interesting, intriguing, revealing, beautiful and hilarious film that cannot be missed. A definite 10 out of 10.

Documentary makers are NOT artists. The worst kind of documentary maker is the kind who thinks he's an artist, and I suspect that the worst kind of "artistic" documentary maker is the kind who began as a painter (or some such). In painting, aesthetic considerations really are paramount as they are almost nowhere else. Painting is an art form with no social influence whatever, and a painter's ONLY professional obligation is to create beautiful pictures. A documentary maker, unlike a painter, has several potentially conflicting professional obligations; chief among them (listen carefully, Greenaway) IS TO INFORM.

A couple of times Greenaway's film threatens to be informative - as I recall, there's a brief discussion of what happens when a body is struck by lightning, and an even briefer synopsis of the physics. But Greenaway undercuts both moments by letting us know he's an artist. Running across the bottom of the screen, to make it as easy as possible for us to avoid actually learning anything, is something like the following: "Lightning effects are called for in Macbeth, Peer Gynt, The Tempest, King Lear..." I don't want to be given a list of stage works involving lightning; if I wanted such a list, I would compile it myself, which would be fun. On the other hand, how lightning is conducted through a human body is exactly the kind of thing I do want to be told - and which images would help me understand. My eyes drifted to that damned pointless list for a moment, and I missed it.

Greenaway's works of fiction may well be brilliant. Michael Powell, possibly the finest director Britain has ever produced, wasn't any good at documentaries, either. He only made one, at the end of his career, when he couldn't find anything else to do. Watching it you sense exactly the same thing as you sense while watching "Act of God": an artist - whether good or bad, it's impossible to tell - utterly ill at ease, doing what artists were never meant to do, and not knowing how to go about it.

And what's with Greenaway's technique with his interview subjects? He cuts away from them in mid anecdote, sometimes mid SENTENCE, for no reason except to make them look foolish. If they came to him in good faith, he had no right.