The Draughtsman’s Contract

Is it really forty years since I first saw Peter Greenaway’s The Draughtsman’s Contract? I had little understanding of it then; would it be any clearer now?

After a recent viewing, I felt that few other art-house films have remained as fresh or stimulating. Always visually stunning and with a banging score by Michael Nyman, this comedy-drama has remained a cinematic tour de force.

Greenaway was a painter before becoming an experimental filmmaker. With such a background, it comes as no surprise to find every shot carefully framed and every costume carefully blended to harmonise or contrast with the affluent country house where Mr Neville (Anthony Higgins) has been contracted by Mrs Herbert (Janet Suzman) to create twelve drawings of her house and gardens. The drawings are to be a present for her negligent husband. However, Mr Neville has other contractual arrangements in mind than mere cash. He demands, in the presence of the family solicitor, that Mrs Herbert meet with him for his ‘pleasure’.

Not only is the screen carefully composed, but as he draws, Mr Neville uses grids to help with accuracy of line and proportion. We have a frame within a frame. Further, Nyman’s  score is composed to complement each scene, offering a further angle on the drawings. In a style we have come to recognise as typical of Greenaway, layers of meaning are piled on top of layers of absurdity, spiced with knowing wink humour. It is a heady, but also exasperating, concoction.

As he sets about his commission, Mr Neville’s arrogance antagonises all members of the household, and he finds himself embroiled in multiple disputes and feuds. The dialogue (also by Greenaway) here crackles with contemporary references and personal insults.

As the drawings progress, despite Mr Neville’s instructions, various anomalous items are left in view: ladders, boots, and shirts. Mr Neville includes them in the drawings, but their significance only becomes apparent in the final scenes.

Meanwhile, Mr Neville’s erotic meetings with Mrs Herbert continue, but she is eventually superseded by her daughter, Mrs Talman (Anne-Louise Lambert), who has schemes of her own. The plot twists and turns with an inheritance issue emerging, the question of an heir to the house and lands, a mysterious animated statue, and many other threads that are either pertinent or red herrings. After all, this is ultimately a murder mystery, and convention demands such artifice.

Michael Nyman’s score features a harpsichord to satisfy those looking for a country house costume drama, but also has the relentlessness of the Minimalists (very fashionable in 1982). The integration of Purcell with Philip Glass produced an eccentric mix that perfectly suited Greenaway’s enigmatic story-telling. Later, Nyman won multiple awards for The Piano but received little recognition for the ingenious work he did for The Draughtsman’s Contract.

With little attempt to dovetail the plot into a satisfying denouement, Mr Herbert’s body is found in the moat; Mr Neville is accused of the murder and then viciously killed by the enemies he has made. Part of the shock value of the ending is the brutality of Mr Neville’s final moments, contrasted with the elaborate hairstyles and elegant clothes featured throughout.

Greenaway has never shied away from horror and shock value in his films. Indeed, he was to deal with cannibalism in The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover, but for me, he never did it better than this 1982 masterpiece.