The Baby of Mâcon (1993)

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  March 11, 2011

  fb1142797643

  This is a wild one -- perhaps best described as the document of a "snuff play" being staged in the 1600s? The enclosed play concerns a hideous old woman who gives birth to an improbably beautiful son. The woman's virginal daughter (Julia Ormond) passes off the child as her own, a... read morend proclaims him a messiah-like miracle. He is worshipped for a time, but eventually, the people turn against him and his mother.
  
  This rather simple story is lavishly obfuscated and complicated with director Peter Greenaway's usual baroque treatment. The sets and costumes are spectacular and, as always, there is plenty of frontal nudity (yup, Ralph Fiennes shows his wee-wee). Three particular scenes are grotesquely violent and bound to turn off many viewers, but if you can get past the first few minutes -- where a naked, twitching, undead lunatic sputters some opening lines so laboriously that you won't even understand all the words -- you'll probably be able to stomach the rest of the film without any real trouble.

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  September 30, 2009

  Sloirishbud

  The thing that you must consider when watching the film The Baby of Macon is that it isn't just another disturbing film, its delivery and cinematography are masterful to say the least. The set design is also quite good, the only thing against it is the content. Like most of direc... read moretor Peter Greenaway's other films, The Baby of Macon includes a lot of very disturbing ideas and concepts. The story begins as a play within a play, this concept is so well executed that when watching the movie it is very hard to understand what he wanted to convey as real and what is supposed to be the play.
  The story begins in the village of Macon, a town that is plagued by famine, pestilence, and barrenness. Suddenly like a light coming out of the darkness a fat, old, and ugly woman from the town miraculously gives birth to a baby boy. Immediately afterwards the womans daughter imprisons her mother and claims that she had the boy by means of immaculate conception. She exploits the previously joyus event by selling the blessings of the child to the weak and weary townsfolk. Now as a brief aside, the acting in this film is very well played both Julia Ormond and Ralph Fiennes are amazing in this film and hit most if not all of their marks.
  At this point in the film the Catholic Church feels that they must intervene because someone claims to have a holy child, is making a profit, and is not cutting them in! The Bishops Son played by Ralph Fiennes is sent to prove that the young woman is indeed not a virgin and is in fact a blasphemer. The Son who is a believer in science and is a religious skeptic doubts the validity of the daughters story. She attempts to convince him that she is indeed a virgin offering him her virginity stating that if he were to enter her, his prick would be covered in blood. Before he is able to consummate this strange sexual union the supposedly holy baby commands a bull to kill him and it does. The Bishop arrives to find his son gored to death and the virgin covered in his blood. The blame for his sons death falls squarely upon the shoulders of the virgin daughter.
  The Bishop takes custody of the baby of Macon and the Church begins to exploit him and the town on a far grander scale than the daughter previously had. The daughter decides that the best way to deal with this betrayal of the faithful is to quietly suffocate the baby to death. Then the church sentences the girl to death, but since she is a virgin they cannot legally kill her outright. So the Bishop instead sentences her to be raped 208 times (not a very fun scene to sit through). Then the church dismembers the babies body and sells the remains as religious relics. The film ends with plague, pestilence, and famine once again falling upon the poor people in the town of Macon. This film is good, but is a huge bummer.

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  July 3, 2009

  RicC

  I couldn't get passed the play-in-film approach, and the entrapment of settings and events never provided adequate escapism - characters just seemed limited and static. But such perverse and over-the-top dialogue and twisted scenes (With only one scene that is truly twisted) almo... read morest made up for that. Aberrant performances and actions. Sometimes hypnotic because of the set pieces and echoing voices, other times just plain freaky.

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  January 21, 2008

  metalnoir

  An indescribably horrid-yet-beautiful religious farce: the perfect balance of offensiveness and great film-making.

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• Julia Ormond as The Daughter
• Ralph Fiennes as The Bishop's Son
• Philip Stone as The Bishop
• Jonathan Lacey as Cosimo Medici
• Don Henderson as The Father Confessor
• Jeff Nuttall as The Major Domo
• Gabrielle Reidy as Midwife
• Anna Nieland as Wet Nurse
• Frank Egerton as Cantor

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