world_of_weird Review of Act of God

Act of God (1980 TV Movie)

Interesting, if distractingly 'arty', documentary on an unusual subject

[10 December 2004]

I'm not a big fan of Peter Greenaway's movies - they're usually too abstruse, confrontational and willfully "clever" for their own good - but Act Of God is a minor classic, if only because it presents a series of widely differing accounts of what it's like when the unthinkable happens, in this case, being struck by lightning. The film taps into a morbid curiosity that, like it or not, exists in most people, and satisfies our desire to know more about a bizarre 'natural' phenomena. The brief 'sting' of Michael Nyman's typically strident music that divides the interviews is a real brain-bug, and I can still remember it more than fifteen years after I last saw this. As the horror expert Kim Newman noted in his book 'Nightmare Movies', Peter Greenaway is primarily a documentation, and this piece, along with 'The Falls', rank among his best efforts to date.