Synopsis
The Draughtsman's Contract (1982) is a British period mystery and comedy directed by Peter Greenaway — watch it online on iFILM. England, 1694. A brash young artist named Mr. Neville takes a commission: twelve precise landscape drawings of the Herbert estate while the master of the house is away. His payment is monetary and, by private arrangement with Mrs. Herbert, rather more intimate.
Neville works with a surveyor's exactness. But something odd keeps appearing in the drawings — objects that shouldn't be there, absences that shouldn't exist. When Mr. Herbert's body turns up at the property, those meticulous images become evidence. Anthony Higgins plays Neville, with Janet Suzman and Hugh Fraser in the supporting cast.
Greenaway builds a Baroque puzzle where the joke is on the man who thinks observation equals understanding. Michael Nyman's harpsichord score — dense and repetitive in the best way — became influential enough to stand entirely on its own. One of the more genuinely strange British films of the 1980s, and better the second time. Stream The Draughtsman's Contract (1982) online on iFILM.
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