Goltzius & the Pelican Company

The Dutch engraver Hendrik Goltzius asks the Margrave of Alsace for money to set up his own printing press. In return he makes an offer: his company will stage the most taboo stories in the Bible at court. As the performances go on, the line between what is on stage and what is in the room dissolves. The film is not interested in eroticism. It is interested in patronage: to get the money the artist produces what his client wants to see, and dirties his own work doing it. The question the film asks is whether the press was worth it. The form is Peter Greenaway construction throughout: layered images stacked on the frame, text written across the screen, compositions framed like a stage, and a narrator who never stops. It is less cinema than a book put on stage. The film drew argument for its explicit sexual content and for showing the taboo stories directly; as in Greenaway's late work, discomfort is a deliberate aim. F. Murray Abraham plays the Margrave, Ramsey Nasr plays Goltzius. Who it is for: viewers who enjoy Greenaway's formal games, his art-historical appetite and theatrical cinema. Who it is not for: anyone avoiding explicit content or dense talk. The film barely falls silent across nearly two hours.