The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 1: The Moab Story

This film is the nth Wonder of the World. It's just so unashamedly full of details, pictures in pictures, special effects, not so special effects, special and unspecial characters, kids, lists of lists, colors, sets, music that puts other, more franchise-y trilogies such as Matrix and Lord of the Rings to shame, plot, plot, plot, perspectives and fiery dialogue about America, Europe, war, sex, friendship, family, torture, dentistry,... It's nominally about stuff like imprisonment and 20th century history, but it's really all about the limits of film and the artist's ability to satirize his own extremism. And the tracking-shots are just stupid, in a good way. And it's completely insane. And so funny I was shaking and bit my chewing gum in half. It never stops. I think P.G. ran out of money --- the sequel wasn't too great --- which is a shame, he's been planning this for years. Anyway, I believe I enjoyed this film. And hey: I love Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Braveheart too.

Peter Greenaway likes drugs and attempting to differentiate his movies from others. I've seen a few of his other movies before this one and I'm really not much of a fan. I simply don't care for his style but I still respect him somewhat as he doesn't seem to care about living up to peoples expectations. He seems to have plenty of original ideas but it seems as if he never seems to care about perfecting them and bring them out in the most cockneyest of ways. With that said this (along with the whole project) to me doesn't seem much more than a concept... most of the effects (some of which have been used by Greenaway in his previous films) aren't used to their full potential but are used well enough to prove that they can. This might not be an excellent film but it certainly isn't a bad one.

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.