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Ordering the Chaos

© Andrej Ristic

Talking about Peter Greenaway's films is always easy at first, they can usually be explained in one sentence. "Drowning by Numbers" is no exception; it is about three women who decided to murder their husbands. But it is also about the games and about mathematics in the broadest sense of the terms.

On the first level, it is an absurdist black comedy. When the oldest of the three women, all named Cissy Colpitts (Joan Plowright) drowns her husband in his tub because he was just unfaithful and he is still drunk out of his mind, local coroner Madgett (Bernard Hill) learns of the foul play but lets her get away because he finds himself madly in love with her.

But Cissies II and III (Juliet Stevenson and Joely Richardson) follow their mother/grandmother's footsteps, but not because they have to, it is because they can and Madgett falls in love with each of them. But he has to report the murders to the police and the number of angry relatives of the husbands is rising.

The movie is a tour through Greenaway's interests and passions, from mathematics, numerology, probability and statistics, to Darwinian laws and history of Western art, to mention just a few.

Numbers are everywhere throughout the film, a teenage girl recites the names of a hundred celestial objects, the hundred count begins again. At one point we see a number 18 on a rabbit cage and four numbers later, we see copy of Joseph Heller's "Catch 22". Dead bee is 45 and counting continues throughout the work.

Madgett and his son, teenage called Smut are fanatics for all sorts of games, particularly the weird and surreal ones. Sheep and Tides, as Smut explains is about tying a flock of sheep to a set of armchairs on which teacups are placed and it serves to understand the turning of the tides.

Smut falls in love with the above mentioned girl and learns of her joy of reading the passage in the Bible where Abraham circumcises himself, thus Smut does it as well, with a pair of warmed scissors, making it into a new game.

And at the end, Smut plays the hanging game with himself, stating that he is the winner and the loser of it at the same time.

What is the film about? Nothing. Everything. Any answer seems to be good as any other. The numbers, fascinatingly keep some order within a total chaos of deeds and ideas that flow, at first logically, then for no reason whatsoever. As Umberto Eco states in his book, "Foucault's Pendulum" that he is able through manipulation with numbers to equate Jesus Christ with Benito Mussolini but has no idea how they can be related, though he knows they must be. It is about human compulsion to make order out of the chaos we live in. But that is just my view on the main subject. It is also one of the most wonderful and blackest comedies I've seen in years.