“Is this gross, or is this gross?” So asked the late Ken Russell (a filmmaker who knew a bit about grossness) of a scene in DROWNING BY NUMBERS (1988), a film Russell claimed showcased writer-director Peter Greenaway’s “apparent loathing of the human race.” The scene in question involves a young boy circumcising himself (offscreen, of course) in a narrative about three women, all named Cissy, who drown their husbands. Does this truly denote a “loathing of the human race?” Quite possibly, but you won’t find a more stylish or idiosyncratic expression of that loathing (fact: the late Jerzy Kosinski viewed this film on the night he committed suicide by asphyxiating himself in his bathtub).
DROWNING BY NUMBERS 1988 Trailer
Mr. Russell’s comments notwithstanding, DROWNING BY NUMBERS was one of Greenaway’s better received features. It won the “Best Artistic Contribution” award at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival, and the reviews were generally quite strong (from the LOS ANGELES TIMES: “With great visual wit and formal ingenuity, Greenaway turns DROWNING into a grand numbers game”), although it took until 1991, three years after its completion, for the film to find distribution in the US (following the success of Greenaway’s breakthrough 1989 feature THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE AND HER LOVER).
The film begins with the young “Skipping Girl” (Natalie Morse), who skips rope (she’s never seen doing anything else) while reciting the names of 100 stars. This sets in motion a numerological motif that continues throughout the film, which contains the numbers 1 to 100 either spoken or written somewhere onscreen (a pavement, dead cows’ asses, a boat’s hull, etc.).
Cissy Colpitts 1 (Joan Plowright) is an aging housewife living in a Suffolk, England beachfront community. In this place hundreds of washed-up fish flap on the beach and life seems to consist of endless games, organized by the sexually frustrated male populace. One man who isn’t lacking for sexual companionship is Cissy 1’s husband (Bryan Pringle), who she catches in a steel bucket bath tryst with a younger woman; Cissy 1 responds by pushing her hubbie’s head under the water until he’s dead.
The crime is covered up with the help of the local coroner Madgett (Bernard Hill) and his 10 year old son Smut (Jason Edwards). The latter (based on Greenaway’s younger self) is a precocious sort who’s obsessed with death, setting off fireworks whenever he finds a dead animal. Smut is also tasked with providing narration, in which he describes the particulars of the various games played onscreen. As for Smut’s father, he’s looking to seduce Cissy 1, but she turns down his advances.
Cissy 1’s daughter Cissy Colpitts 2 (Juliet Stevenson) offers Madgett a second chance to practice his seduction techniques after she drowns her slovenly husband (Trevor Cooper) in the ocean. Once again Madgett assists in covering up the crime, and once again has his overture spurned. Cissy 2’s young cousin, Cissy Colpitts 3 (Joely Richardson), follows her elders’ lead by drowning her husband (David Morrissey) in a community swimming pool. She’s a bit more receptive to Madgett’s advances than the other Sissies, but still turns him down. Eventually the three Cissys lure Madgett into a rowboat for a final, fateful ocean-bound encounter.
Smut becomes besotted with Skipping Girl. It’s on her say-so that he performs the abovementioned self-circumcision, but his efforts are rendered moot when she’s killed by a hit-and-run driver. This leads Smut to acquire Skipping Girl’s jump rope for a game whose object is to “dare to fall with a noose around your neck from a place sufficiently high enough off the ground such that the fall will hang you.”
What precisely does all this mean (and you can bet that everything has a deeper meaning in Peter Greenaway’s universe)? I don’t think anyone really knows but Mr. Greenaway. At least he’s blessed with beautifully rendered cinematography by the late Sacha Vierny and a playfully minimalist Michael Nyman score (taken from portions of Mozart’s “Sinfonia Concertante”) that serve to accentuate an oddly cheerful tone.
Beyond that the film contains most everything we’ve come to expect from Greenaway: jam-packed compositions that cram in as many people and objects as possible, a heavy concentration on classical painting (with a Peter Bruegal reproduction proving quite eye-catching), a sexual frankness that belies the ever-present sense of British refinement, coupled with extremely copious nudity (male and female) and game playing that stretches far beyond the onscreen narrative—in addition to the onscreen number motif there apparently exist 100 objects starting with the letter in “S” in Smut’s room and just as many starting with “M” in Madgett’s domain, so there’s no shortage of things to count.
Vital Statistics
DROWNING BY NUMBERS
Film Four International
Director: Peter Greenaway
Producers: Kees Kasander, Denis Wigman
Screenplay: Peter Greenaway
Cinematography: Sacha Vierny
Editing: John Wilson
Cast: Bernard Hill, Joan Plowright, Juliet Stevenson, Joely Richardson, Jason Edwards, Bryan Pringle, Trevor Cooper, David Morrissey, John Rogan, Paul Mooney, Jane Gurnett, Kenny Ireland, Michael Percival, Joanna Dickens, Janine Duvitski, Michael Fitzgerald, Edward Tudor-Pole, Natalie Morse