My advice is to first watch 'Rembrandt's J'Accuse', Greenaway's companion film. It fills you in on the background, the characters, the thesis for the conspiracy, and generally sets the scene for 'Nightwatching' itself, which is extremely elaborate and requires a far more prolonged degree of concentration than 99.9% of films being released. Having said that, the film certainly stands alone as a powerful and intelligent piece of cinema that puts forward a contentious and challenging theory about the circumstances surrounding Rembrandt's painting.
Some viewers have pointed out how moving the film is - and indeed it is. But I for one have found ALL of Greenaway's films to be deeply moving. Unlike mainstream directors, he doesn't attempt to tug at the heartstrings, but instead deploys one rich, elegaic, achingly beautiful set piece after another, letting the ideas and associations reach the emotions of the audience. In Greenaway's world, extreme beauty and extreme horror exist cheek-by-jowl - his heroes (more so than his heroines) look for logic and order, and find ultimately chaos and decay - the good go unrewarded, the bad go unpunished - and yet, out of it all, rises a triumphant celebration of life, art, human aspiration, and the possibilities of cinema itself.
If you want a bedtime story about goodies overcoming baddies, look elsewhere. 'Nightwatching', like Greenaway's other work, offers - and demands - much more than that.
