Belly of an Architect, The (Blu-ray Review)
- Review Date: Apr 21, 2025
- Format: Blu-ray Disc
-
Director
Peter GreenawayRelease Date(s)
1987 (April 29, 2025)Studio(s)
Hemdale Film Corporation (Vinegar Syndrome Labs)- Film/Program Grade: B+
- Video Grade: B+
- Audio Grade: B+
- Extras Grade: B
Review
The Belly of an Architect was the fourth feature film from writer/director/artist/gamesman Peter Greenaway, although to be more precise (which is entirely fitting for Greenaway), it was only his third narrative feature film, setting aside his mockumentary The Falls. Yet even by that relatively early stage of his cinematic career, he had already established all of the themes to which he would return time and again. Art. Games. Consumption. Gastronomy. Decay. More games. Sex. Birth. Death. More decay. Obsession. Still more games. The food that sustains life is subject to decay, as are those who consume it, and the seeds of new life that lie within its consumers are planted only to inevitably decay and die at some point in the future. It’s an endless cycle driven by human desire, with those basic desires being more connected than we may be willing to admit, as Albert Spica notes in Greenaway’s later The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover: “The pleasures are related because the naughty bits and the dirty bits are so close together that it just goes to show how eating and sex are related.”
In The Belly of an Architect, those pleasures are related because they all revolve around the human abdomen, both the capacious belly of architect Stourley Kracklite (Brian Dennehy) and the far more shapely abdomen of his younger wife Louisa (Chloe Webb). As The Belly of an Architect opens, Kracklite and Louisa are traveling to Rome by train, having sex in their compartment while the Italian countryside goes by. Unbeknownst to both of them, Kracklite has successfully planted the seeds of new life in his wife, as her burgeoning belly will soon attest. Yet they’re also equally unaware that Kracklite’s belly is already housing the seeds of death; namely, cancer, in the form of a tumor that will grow within him in parallel to the growth of Louisa’s new life.
Kracklite is heading toward Rome because he’s been commissioned to design an exhibition honoring French architect Étienne-Louis Boullée. Kracklite is obsessed with Boullée, but his Roman colleagues are less certain that the eighteenth-century architect is really worthy of such honors. Boullée was noted for creating striking designs like his Cénotaphe à Newton, but like much of his work, it was never actually constructed. His style also had a profound influence on Nazi architect Albert Speer, an unfortunate fact that the Romans would be only too happy to forget. Yet Kracklite drives on despite issues funding the exhibit, and his obsessions end up driving a wedge between him and Louisa. As death grows within Kracklite and new life grows within his wife, their marriage faces inevitable decay.
Kracklite initially suspects that Louisa has been poisoning him, a conjecture that’s driven partly by her attraction to Caspasian Speckler (Lambert Wilson), the much younger co-organizer of the exhibit. Yet it’s also driven by his obsession with art and architecture, in this case the Augusto di Prima Porta on display at the Vatican museum. The Roman historian Tacitus recorded rumors that Caesar Augustus had been poisoned by his wife Livia, who supposedly fed him tainted figs. Kracklite assumes that Louisa has been serving him figs for the same purpose, but even when that suspicion is finally dispelled, he still takes Augustus as a model. He uses a photocopier to enlarge a picture of the Augusto di Prima Porta until its belly becomes life-sized, then uses those enlargements to make graphic notes of the symptoms that he’s experiencing in order to show to his doctor. Crucially, before doing so, he holds the photocopy over his own belly, drawing a direct line between himself and Augustus.
Yet Kracklite isn’t being poisoned, and the tumor inside of him is as much the result of his own profligate overconsumption as anything else. The food that sustains life can also cause death, which serves as another reminder of the endless cycles of life, decay, death, and rebirth. Kracklite’s mental state ends up decaying along with his physical well-being, causing him to lose control of both his marriage and the exhibition. He writes letters to the dead Boullée as a way of trying to come to grips with his situation, but it’s of no use. As The Belly of an Architect closes, Louisa has been tasked with opening the exhibition, with Kracklite having retreated to the balcony above, no longer welcomed by either the Romans or his wife. It’s now nine months after their initial rail journey to Rome, and as Louisa cuts the ribbon, she goes into labor and falls to the ground. Lost in the background, forgotten by everyone, so does Kracklite. Birth requires death, and the cycle is now complete—although that cycle will still repeat for generations to come.
Cinematographer Sacha Vierny shot The Belly of an Architect on 35mm film using Panavision cameras with spherical lenses, framed at 1.85:1 for its theatrical release. This version is based on a 2K scan of the original camera negative, but there’s no other information available about the new master. The Belly of an Architect has always been a relatively grainy film, but the grain does seem accentuated here, with a touch of noise present in the darkest scenes. It’s otherwise clean, however, with little signs of damage visible. The flesh tones look natural, as does the rest of the color balance. The reds of the costumes and the production design are vivid without ever appearing oversaturated, and that sickly green glow of the Xerox machine looks as intended. It’s a little disappointing that The Belly of an Architect hasn’t received the full 4K treatment that Vinegar Syndrome has lavished on far more obscure films, but their math on the economics of releasing a Peter Greenaway film might have precluded it. Brian Dennehy or not, ardent Greenaway fans are a relatively small group, while horror fans seem more willing to take whatever they can get in 4K. Still, The Belly of an Architect looks fine in 1080p.
Audio is offered in English 2.0 DTS-HD Master Audio, with optional English SDH subtitles. The Belly of an Architect was released theatrically in Dolby Stereo, but in practice this is essentially a mono mix with stereo music. There’s a tiny bit of ambient activity in the front L/R channels and the surrounds, but most of dialogue and effects stay locked to the center channel. That dialogue is always clear, however, although it sometimes displays a touch of excessive sibilance. The minimalist score by Wim Mertens (with additional work by Glenn Branca) lacks the power of the Michael Nyman Band scores for Greenaway during that period—it’s much less brash—but it still effectively provides momentum for the film. (There’s always been a deliberate tension in Greenaway’s films between his stately camerawork & staging and the incessant rhythmic drive of the minimalist scores by Nyman, Mertens, and others.)
The Vinegar Syndrome Labs Limited Edition Blu-ray release of The Belly of an Architect includes a spot gloss slipcover designed by Steak Mtn. that’s available directly from Vinegar Syndrome, limited to 3,000 units. The insert is reversible, featuring alternate artwork on each side. It also includes a 16-page booklet with an essay by Scout Tafoya. The following extras are included, all of them in HD:
- Audio Commentary with Eugenio Ercolani and Tony Strauss
- Stately Progress (18:03)
- Caput Mundi (28:31)
The commentary pairs film historian and extras producer/director Eugenio Ercolani with Tony Strauss, writer for Scarlet Street and Weng’s Chop magazines. They reiterate that The Belly of an Architect begins with the conception of one life and ends with the death of another, tied with the birth of that new life—it’s all about love, lust, and death. They note how the story was hinted at in one of the newspaper stories visible in Greenaway’s previous film A Zed & Two Noughts, proving that the games in The Belly of an Architect started before it was even filmed. (They even point out other references to newspaper stories seen in A Zed & Two Noughts, including one that acts as a running joke throughout The Belly of an Architect). They spend plenty of time delving into the art and architecture that Greenaway used and referenced, including plenty of details about Étienne-Louis Boullée. They say that Greenaway is a painter who makes films that look like paintings, and yet they also note that Dennehy helped expand his scope as an artist.
Stately Progress is an interview with John Wilson, who was Greenaway’s editor throughout the Eighties. He provides his background and explains how he became associated with the Greenaway during the director’s documentary short days. From there, he breaks down their work together on The Belly of an Architect. Like Ercolani and Strauss, he emphasizes the cycles of birth, life, and death in the film, although Greenaway didn’t want people to think that they were watching some kind of a slice of life, so he always emphasized the artificiality of the staging and editing. It was all just a vehicle in order to put across his ideas.
Caput Mundi is an interview with architect Giampaolo Ercolani, who describes Greenaway as a British director with a passion for Rome. He says that The Belly of an Architect wasn’t as appreciated when it was first released in Italy despite the subject matter, but its reputation has grown since then. Ercolani goes into greater depth regarding Étienne-Louis Boullée, explaining that he helped found an architectural movement that gave up on the idea of decorative elements because they considered such embellishments to be an aesthetic sin, focusing instead on large designs—although in Boullée’s case, most of these designs were never actually constructed, so it existed more in theory than in practice. There’s no evidence that Boullée ever left France to visit Rome, but he was still influenced by existing Roman architecture. Ercolani also details some of that Roman architecture that’s visible in the film, including the history behind it, and analyzes how Greenaway’s choices relate to the story that he was telling.
The only thing that’s missing from any previous editions of The Belly of an Architect is Terence Conran, a 1981 Greenaway short film that was on the 2012 Region B Blu-ray from the BFI in the U.K. It’s a shame that Greenaway hasn’t been directly involved with any of the extras on any release of The Belly of an Architect, because no one can discuss Greenaway like Greenaway. His commentaries and interviews are always filled with just as much gamesmanship and references as his films, which means that they aren’t necessarily illuminating, but they’re endlessly fascinating. That’s the real cycle with Greenaway: not of birth, life, and death, but rather of actively refusing to be pinned down.
In any event, the Vinegar Syndrome Labs Blu-ray release of The Belly of an Architect is the best one to date, with some fine extras of their own and equally fine video and audio quality. Greenaway isn’t for everyone, but while The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover might be more accessible, at least on a visceral level, The Belly of an Architect might be one of the best introductions to his work—but be forewarned, there’s no closing this particular Pandora’s box once you’ve opened it.
-Stephen Bjork
(You can follow Stephen on social media at these links: Twitter, Facebook, BlueSky, and Letterboxd).