Goltzius and the Pelican Company
- sombre
- measured
- intense
- surreal
- bleak
- cold
Sombre, measured, measured drama / art, surreal in texture. Nihilistic, mid-stakes, cold, hand-scored across twelve axes of taste.
How every film is hand-scored →Goltzius and the Pelican Company tells the story of Hendrik Goltzius, a late 16th century Dutch printer and engraver of erotic prints. A contemporary of Rembrandt and, indeed, more celebrated during his life, Goltzius seduces the Margrave of Alsace into paying for a printing press to make and publish illustrated books. In return, he promises him an extraordinary book of pictures of illustrating the Old Testament’s biblical stories. Erotic tales of Lot and his daughters, David and Bathsheba, Samson and Deliah and John the Baptist and Salome. To tempt the Margrave further, Goltzius and his printing company will offer to perform dramatisations of these erotic stories for his court.
Our read · Goltzius and the Pelican Company (2012) reads as a sombre, measured, surreal drama · art · period entry — measured in intensity, mid-stakes in scope, cold in temperature, nihilistic in outlook, with a strong directorial signature. Hand-scored on twelve axes of taste — mood, pacing, weirdness, hope, stakes, humour, reality, density, warmth, auteur, intensity, and era — with a derived palette drawn from its dominant cinematography.
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The shape of Goltzius and the Pelican Company
What watching it is actually like.
“You want lavish Greenaway historical art film drenched in erotic invention.”
Skip it tonight — Skip if long stylized dialogues and explicit period sex sound exhausting.
The reading.
Each axis is hand-scored — not derived from votes or genre averages. The marker shows where this film sits; the gradient fill uses the film's own cinematography palette.
Eight films that read most like this one.
Closeness in the twelve-axis space — how the film actually reads, not “people also liked.”
Discussion
What does your Movie DNA look like?
Rate a few films you've seen. We map your taste across the same twelve axes and find the films you'll actually want to watch tonight.
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