Typically sumptuous in mise-en-scene, photography, and sound for a Peter Greenaway (THE PILLOW BOOK) film, EISENSTEIN IN GUANAJUATO nevertheless feels like a greatest hits compilation of imagery and montage techniques (further refined by advancements in digital editing and compositing); in a sense, this is appropriate, since it has taken so long for Greenaway to apply his evolving style to a tribute to Eisenstein's technique of montage on his three great silent works STRIKE, BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN, and OCTOBER. Eisenstein's cinematic recreation of the Russian Revolution was known stateside as TEN DAYS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD, and Greenaway posits Eisenstein's own short stay in Guanajuato, Mexico - another Russian revolution of a sort - as "Ten Days that Shook Eisenstein." Having been rejected by Hollywood amidst the Red Scare and his Universal contract cancelled, Eisenstein traveled to Mexico - accompanied by cinematographer Eduard Tisse (Jakob Öhrman) and actor/co-director Grisha Alexandrov (Rasmus Slätis) - to independently produce the film ¡Que viva México! with the backing of writer Upton Sinclair. Having shot over two hundred and fifty miles of film over eight months without the opportunity to view the rushes, Eisenstein is pushed to finish the film by his name-dropping Southern Belle wife Mary (Lisa Owen, THE AMAZING CATFISH) and mismanaged by her shifty brother Hunter (Stelio Savante, A BEAUTIFUL MIND) and urged to return to Russia by Stalin. Sexually inexperienced and attracted to his guide, anthropologist/comparative religion teacher Palomino Cañedo (Luis Alberti), Eisenstein is confronted by the city's dual stimulations of Eros and Thanatos (sex and death); only one of which Eisenstein is at ease simulating on film while the other troubles him both onscreen and off. During his ten day stay in Guanajuato, Eisenstein celebrates the fourteenth anniversary of the Russian Revolution and introduces himself both to sex and death in time for the Day of the Dead.