The Belly of an Architect: The Whole History of My Life

THE WHOLE HISTORY OF MY LIFE

marcus pinn

THE BELLY OF AN ARCHITECT (page 2)

I had a feeling The Belly of an Architect would be a pretty tragic film, so I avoided it for a while. My first design job out of college might have been the closest thing to hell I've ever had to deal with, so I wanted absolutely nothing to do with design and/or architecture in any form whatsoever when I wasn't working. Just the title of the film alone got to me: "The Belly of an Architect." It reminded me of that awful feeling I would get in my gut, a feeling I still get to this day on a regular basis, when something goes wrong at work: the wrong style of product shows up onsite, colors and materials don't match, critical dimensions don't add up, etc. Making an error or a mistake in the world of design can cost a lot of money, and I've been the cause of quite a few costly errors in my time for various reasons. I'm sure anyone in that situation can relate to that stomach churning, anxiety-inducing feeling of "Oh shit, I fucked up." Over time that chips away at your confidence and you get that awful feeling in the pit of your stomach whenever the thought of work comes up.

It makes perfect sense that the main character in The Belly of an Architect, played by Brian Dennehey, is suffering from stomach problems. Greenaway focuses quite a bit on the stomach actually. A lot of the classic art we see in the film, whether it be a sculpting or a painting, accentuates the stomach and we see Brian Dennehey constantly gripping his own stomach in agonizing pain due to what we're led to believe are ulcers. The stomach/abdomen/core is where we carry our qui. It's the most important part of the human body and it holds everything together. When you exercise, there's always an emphasis to work on your core. The world of architecture and/or design can certainly break down your core over time due to stress, insecurity, negative thinking and tons of self doubt.

Another reason I avoided the movie for so long is because the DVD box cover art made it look pretty unappealing. Yes, the Criterion Collection has turned me in to a bit of a snob nowadays when it comes to how movies are presented, but trust me when I say this is not a good representation of the movie...

But like a creepy Kids In The Hall sketch, it felt like Belly of an Architect was following me everywhere I went in 2006. I always had to walk past the DVD, which was on display in the same spot whenever I would go to Kim's Video, The IFC Center (which was my second home at the time) ran a mini-retrospective on Greenaway's work, which included Belly of an Architect in its lineup. Then my friend/roommate somehow came across the movie and asked me if I had seen it, given the fact I'm an architectural graduate/cinephile. Clearly something was trying to tell me to watch this, so I finally rented it and was immediately sucked in.

In the film, Brian Dennehey plays Stourley Kracklite, an American architect commissioned by Italian financers to curate an exhibit in Rome dedicated to the work of 18th century French Architect Étienne-Louis Boullée. Through the course of the film we see the arrogant architect slowly lose his sanity, health and even his wife as he struggles with self doubt and battles for artistic freedom.

Not that it makes or breaks the enjoyment of the film, but if you really want to go deep in to The Belly of an Architect, you do have to have a little knowledge on the history of architecture beyond Frank Lloyd Wright and Bauhaus. On one hand, that is a little unfair - why should you need pre-requisites in order to simply watch a movie? Those unfamiliar with architecture, classic art or art house cinema may find Greenaway's references and name-dropping to be a tad bit elitist. But on the other hand, you could take that as Peter Greenaway giving his viewers some credit and making the assumption that they know a thing or two about obscure French Architects or the differences between a robust column versus an oblique column. There's quite a few references to classic Roman architecture that go over even my head, and I took 3 years of History of Architecture in college. There's all these little details in the plot and the Stourley Kracklite character that shows Greenaway did his research on the subject of architecture. Just to know who Étienne-Louis Boullée is without having any architectural background means you care a great deal about the profession - I didn't even know who he was until I saw this. Instead of taking the easy route and basing this film around a more known architect like Le Corbusier or Mies Vandero, Greenaway chose to focus on an unknown whose best work never made it out of his sketchbooks.

There's obviously a semi-autobiographical side to Architect. Stourley Kracklite believes his life is a mirror of Boullée's - the unrecognized architect who dies before he reaches greatness. And I'm sure Greenaway, a director who's just become more obscure over the years, sees a lot of himself in both Kracklite and Boullee.

I like to think, if I may be so arrogant, that it's possible to compare the work of a filmmaker with that of an architect. We both have to be accountable to our backers and to the man in the street, but we also need to satisfy ourselves and our idea of culture. It would be too close to the bone, obviously, to make a film about a filmmaker. So at the back of my mind I have been searching for some time to find an appropriate parallel. - Peter Greenaway (Peter Greenaway: Interviews)

The cinema of Peter Greenaway is an acquired taste and a little tough to categorize. I don't even know myself if I'm a real fan of his work overall. If anything, I'm more fascinated by him (he comes off like an unpleasant old person whose still strangely entertaining to hang around) and his style. No matter how serious or dramatic the events in his films may be - in Belly of an Architect's case it's infidelity, stomach cancer and suicide - there's always a thin layer of humor that can sometimes confuse the viewer to the point where they don't know if they should be taking something serious or not. There's a random scene early on where Kracklite manhandles his wife and forces food down her throat in bed, and it's honestly kind of funny even though that's really nothing to laugh at. In another scene, Brian Dennehey drunkenly rages through the streets of Rome and it's just as much hilarious as it is tragic.

As in most of Greenaway's work, a lot of the shots in Belly of an Architect seem to be modeled after that classic image of the Last Supper of Christ where everyone and everything is gathered together, lined up in one continuous shot with nothing important left out of the frame. This a common element found in Wes Anderson's work. I often wonder why Anderson never mentions Peter Greenaway as one of his major influences. It's pretty obvious. All you have to do is look at how the shots are set up and framed in The Royal Tenenbaums or The Life Aquatic, then watch Belly of an Architect or The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (which coincidentally stars Wes Anderson collaborator Michael Gambon) and you'll get it. For some reason, the only filmmakers Wes Anderson openly cites as his influences are Satijyat Ray, Hal Ashby and various French New Wave directors. If you've ever read any of my writings on here or on my own site, you'd know I'm big on influences, comparisons, paying homage and even stealing. I know I can get carried away with that sometimes, but the comparison between the two filmmakers is uncanny. I guess it bugs me that Anderson is so open to give credit to other filmmakers, yet one of the most obvious influences on his work never gets a shout out. To me that's like Paul Thomas Anderson saying he's never heard of Robert Altman, or a pre-2007 David Gordon Green professing that he's never seen a Terrence Malick movie. It's fitting that an overlooked yet influential filmmaker such as Greenaway would make a film that's partially about Boullée, another overlooked yet influential figure.

Dennehey's performance as the driven, self-absorbed, hypocritical, megalomaniac architect is a lot more relatable to me than Gary Cooper's performance in The Fountainhead. When I watch Stourley Kracklite, I'm reminded of some of my professors and the people I cross paths with in my profession on a daily basis. I was taken aback by how well Greenaway captured the difficulty and angst that comes along with design and what it's like to completely lose yourself in a project while fighting for artistic freedom.

Stourley Kracklite is an asshole. He's a giant, overweight, domineering alpha-male who embodies so many stereotypes that the Europeans he's surrounded by have of Americans. He doesn't have many likeable qualities, but at the same time we do have some sympathy for him - the cancer in his stomach gets worse and worse to the point where you can almost feel his pain. His self doubt in his ability as an architect has also seeped into other areas of his life: he suspects that his wife, who shares no interest in his work and is unfaithful, is poisoning him. Rarely do we ever get to see the big burly Brian Dennehey play such a vulnerable character outside of that scene at the end of Cocoon where he cries. Dennehey's physique and menacing mannerisms make it tough for us to believe that such a grizzly bear-like man could break down and fall apart yet he pulls it off very well.

A big part of Dennehey's believable performance is that, even though he's much larger in stature than anyone else, he shares the screen within the film. The classic Roman architecture he's surrounded by, specifically the massive columns, make Dennehey look like a dwarf in comparison. Greenaway uses classic Roman architecture cleverly all throughout the film and plays off of the many famous round/circular designs in city. In some of the earliest dialogue we hear Dennehey dub Rome "the home of the dome and the arch." The circle, or variation of anything round - cycles, curves, arches, domes, bellies, etc. - is a huge theme in the film. The story itself is one giant cycle of life. The film starts with conception and ends with a death.

I feel like I'm the only one who recognizes The Belly of an Architect's importance. It's slowly falling into obscurity along with the rest of Greenaway's work; I don't know too many people who've seen it and there's not much recent stuff written about it. Even sites that are dedicated to the linkage between architecture and film barely recognize Belly of an Architect's existence. If you go to Archdaily.com, a site that supposedly reviews architecture-related films, their "review" of Architect is literally just copied from the Wikipedia page. I've always liked this film, but I never thought of it as one of my personal favorites until I got the idea to write about it almost two years ago. This started out as a small review for my own site, but after reading Chris' work on The Pink Smoke, I came to the realization that The Belly of an Architect is an important lil' artifact within the history of my own life and one of the few films I really relate too. Blue Velvet, Taxi Driver, The Piano Teacher and a few others are some of my all-time favorites, but I don't really relate to them on a truly personal level the same way I do with Greenaway's film. This is the embodiment of a misunderstood masterpiece, and if there was ever a film that represented me in a nutshell, it might very well be this.

<<Previous Page 1 2 Next Page>>

home about contact us featured writings years in review film productions