I'd really enjoy discussing any and all aspects of Nightwatching without having to worry about spoiling the plot for those who haven't yet seen it.  So let's leave the regular Nightwatching thread relatively spoiler-free, and discuss here.  Who else wants to play?

For starters, I'm a bit puzzled by the "scratch his eyes out" scenes.  On first viewing, I thought the scene at the beginning of the movie was actually the end of the story, so that  the whole rest of the movie was basically a flashback -- but on second viewing, I realized that Rembrandt was having a nightmare that time, so that scene was actually foreshadowing.  (The movie has a sh*tload of that!)

My question has to do with the second such scene, at the very end of the movie.  Rembrandt has apparently been beaten up -- there's a big bruise on his left shoulder -- but has he been blinded for real this time?  Or is he so "blind drunk" that he merely thinks he can't see?  I don't see anything online about the real Rembrandt being blinded, so I'm guessing the latter.  But is there some clarification in the film that I've missed?  Or is it left ambiguous?

While researching the blindness question, by the way, I ran across one interesting tidbit.  Rembrandt really did have a "lazy eye" -- or at least it's now suspected that his eyes would not cooperate to form a three-dimensional image (what's called stereo blindness), and I would think the two conditions could be related.

Last edited by Carol the Dabbler (August 30, 2012 5:10 pm)