How can one not love a filmmaker who, in the opening five minutes of his film, states that most of humanity is “visually illiterate” and that it’s this illiteracy that may account for the world’s “impoverished cinema?” Though I laughed, a large part of the crowd in the nearly sold out screening coughed and shifted uncomfortably and you could nearly make out what they were thinking: is he going to insult us through the entire film? Peter Greenaway wasn’t trying to hurt anyone’s feelings, he was merely stating fact as he sees it and frankly, I can’t say I completely disagree.

Regardless, the comment, though it initially comes across as a poke, gets at what Greenaway intended to do with Rembrandt’s J’accuse namely, study a painting like one would a novel to attain some meaning and understanding as to what Rembrandt was trying to say by painting it.

A perfect companion piece to Nightwatching (our review), Greenaway builds Rembrandt’s J’accuse as a sort of visual and auditory essay, outlining 30 (+1) points that support his thesis. Greenaway brilliantly incorporates clips from the film and then fills in the background information essentially flushing out each point which was included in the film.

A true master, Greenaway manages to create a visually appealing documentary which uses nothing more than a few clips from his film, the painting in question and his talking head. There are no experts, no musical montages just a huge amount of meticulously researched and considered information. I can’t imagine how well this will play for those who have not seen Nightwatching since Rembrandt’s J’accuse feels like the sort of documentary one might expect to see as a DVD extra but I’m thrilled to have had the chance to see it and look forward to the opportunity to see it and the fictionalized account of the story back to back.

See VIFF screening schedule for show times.