Roman Polanski

[Jean]

Sorry if bears are incoherent this time – weather conditions, you know – anyway, all the most important points have already been made by DD, in a clear and concise manner.

1. Entombed

The word “trapped” can be often heard in the analyses of the film; but trapped doesn’t begin to describe it. A trap is something finite, temporary: liberation is at least theoretically possible, and if the worst comes to the worst, death liberates one from any trap.

You can see the world outside when you are trapped. Or at least you know there is a world outside. Not so much so if you are walled in. Buried alive. Entombed. There sure is no escape, not even through death, and it feels like there is nothing but further walls and layers of soil in the world outside – which may very well be the case.

It is definitely the case with the bleak universe of The Ghost Writer. Everything is gray, brown, black with occasional alarming red. Whether it is the interior or the exterior, there is no elbow room: the two elements that normally symbolize all there is free and open – the sea and the sky – do everything to bury us deeper. The sky is never blue, always low, like a coffin lid.

The foghorns remind us that it is all too easy to lose one’s way in this murk. Desplat’s music doesn’t bring to mind any sunny side, either.

There is no difference between the walls made of bricks and the one made of glass: the latter shows nothing but yet another wall, that of fog, rain, and bleak landscape. When the alarm goes off and the shutter falls down, nothing really changes: it only gets a little darker. It’s not that we’re cut off from the rest of the world – the presence of the rest is questionable. There is a glass wall behind the shutter, and the wall of fog behind the glass wall, and nobody ever sees sunlight. Ours is a confined, walled-in, entombed universe.

The confines are everywhere, physical or social, those imposed by status or fate, the rules and regulations. The first word the ghost hears abroad is “Passport!” A bodyguard follows Adams on his morning jog. When the ghost walks the shore with Ruth, the security man is seen on the background between them, like the axis. These human confines are omnipresent. “Don’t wander around on your own, the security boys don’t like it.”

The ghost blends in perfectly; as DD pointed out, he looks like little more than a shadow.

When asked what he could bring as a writer, his answer is of course, “Nothing.” This lets us know from the start just how much presence this guy has, how noticeable he is. Hell, the title itself is a clue: he is a shadow, a person who hardly registers to anyone else, certainly not to the person he is writing for. It’s clear that this isn’t something he’s had a choice in so he can do his job, but more something he’s just always been naturally that just makes him suited for the job.

It makes him suited for the job, for the landscape, for the interiors – and would make him perfectly fit for this drab colorless universe if the universe was in any way fit for human living.

Lang is the first person who looks incongruous: unlike the ghost, he wasn’t made for such environment. It’s him who is trapped: the idea of a trap involves a hope, to escape - to a brighter world.

There is a hint that a brighter world actually exists. The house where Emmett lives has some colors (green and cream, and precious mahogany); even the trees seem greener when seen out of his window. Those who run the show are apparently exempt from the universal prison-like drabness; or rather, there is a more spacious, better lit tomb right outside the one where we’re buried together with the ghost. It’s where Lang wants to come back to – but he is already marked for the kill, there is no escape, not even to a larger prison cell.

There is something resembling sunshine when Rick comes and draws the curtains, but it is five minutes before the end, and the end is - well, you know. And Rick is, of course, one of the privileged inmates, even if we assume he is alive at all – of all the characters he is the one who most reminds of Polanski’s soulless creatures, agents of the universal order of things.

“Single or return?” – “Return. I hope.” The hope is misplaced: the return is predetermined, and only delays the inevitable. Clues, cues, words, GPS – everything will direct you into the trap. “All right, you win”.


2. Of Cyclops and Men

It’s the first Polanski film where the main division line doesn’t run between human beings (victims, sufferers) and soulless monsters (torturers; invincible, invulnerable): both sides seem to have souls, and Ruth is as prone to suffering as the ghost himself. Both sides seem to be human beings (with a few notable exceptions), and yet there is great difference between them. At first sight it is the difference between the foolers and the fooled, the players and the pawns, but that which makes a person end up with these or those must be an inborn quality.

The key to understanding this difference is the ghost’s apparent idiocy. He does all the wrong things. He says all the wrong words to all the wrong people. He investigates where he should stop, confronts those he should avoid at all costs, gives away everything and can’t keep his mouth shut under any circumstances, As if he doesn’t know he is the main character of a political thriller.

But no, he doesn’t know this, that’s the point! He behaves exactly as any sane person would: he assumes they are all human beings around him. Exactly like I know I would if I were him. There is nothing that can’t be talked over, among people. The fact that we are all alive, endowed with speech and reason, is what matters and is actually present; the remote considerations of power, big money, and political careers are something out of books, they do not apply to the world we are living in; we might know that people kill for them, but do we really feel it?

He doesn’t know how high the stakes are, because there have never been any stakes, high or low, in his own experience. He knows, intellectually, that his predecessor was killed, but he has nothing in his experience that could make him really fathom this. Like all of us, he believes he is immortal; in his experience or personality there is nothing that would warrant such a majestic thing as becoming a victim of a political murder.

His experience is exactly like ours. He is just like us, who would blurt out anything to a human being that happened to be nearby. If we knew we lived in a political thriller with no happy ending, the kind where the protagonist dies, we might all behave differently; but we, none of us, know what is the genre of our flick.

But they – “they”, there is always a “they” – live in a world that is ruled by exactly the categories inapplicable to ours. They betray and spy, sacrifice for “higher aims”, double-cross and get rid of each other, set up and murder. Apparently, they still remain human beings – but here’s where I begin to wonder if there is only one species inside mankind. Or that there are humans per se, and some, say, “advanced” humans; some variations of the basic model that make any understanding between the species impossible.

Emmett’s residence is guarded by Cyclops Security. Cyclops isn’t a bad word for that which I have in mind. They are just humanoid enough. One may argue that Cyclops have but one eye, so may be escaped; but this is where another important characteristic comes forward.

You could escape a Cyclops if he was alone; not when they are an organized group. One eye or no one eye, together they see everything - when they are a collective entity. A “They”.

“You’re working for the good guys,” Rycart says. But there are no good guys. Whenever there are “guys”, it is always bad. The people from this side of the dividing line never form the “guys” entity; Cyclops always do (they have but one eye each, remember?)

“You are practically one of us now”. A joke, of course: never ever will he be one of any group. He will always hold on to his poor basic humanity, behaving exactly like one of those they’d never acknowledge as theirs: see what he does to their precious manuscript, for example, how he shields his head against the rain with it, how he throws it into the fence right into the puddle. Listen to the clumsy jokes he makes. See him yawn.

He’s funny, but it’s always in an awkward way. Even worse is that he’s a Brit on an American island, adding more to the general feeling of being an outsider. A huge contradiction right there: he’s invisible and yet he’s singled out. Whatever he is and wherever he is, he’s certainly not part of the group. He’s effectively on his own.

This last is said explicitly about him a number of times – no, never meaning anything existential, only stating the obvious, whether he says this himself (“I am on my own” - meaning not affiliated with any newspaper), or Emmett’s wife does (“he’s on his own” - meaning he didn’t bring anyone along). His Katelbach will never come, of course; and he is too lonely anyway to ever dream of a Katelbach.


3. The Ghost, the Tenant and Backstage Death

Nor is he Simone Choule.

“Mister McAra loved this car very, very much.”… “Very good. You could be the new Mike McAra.”… “So, this is where you put the granny?” – “No, this is where we put Mike McAra.”

But he won’t stand by the wardrobe, fascinated. He throws the slippers into the waste basket, and dumps everything else into a big suitcase. Not that it changes anything: doomed is doomed, and the phone number discovered during the dumping is a big step forward, into the abyss.

Yesterday, on my 1000th re-watch of The Tenant, I noticed that quite a few times during the film he is shown waking up– and every time he wakes up to find a world slightly different, further gone. Sleep is the doorway to nightmares. Dr.Walker (Frantic) woke to a nightmare, too, and, like the ghost’s, Walker’s heavy unrefreshing sleep was due to jet lag. The ghost sleeps a lot in the beginning of the film – on the plane, on the ferry, in the taxi; reading the manuscript. He awakes to the world he has no business being in.

The film begins and ends with a death; we do not actually see anyone die either time. Both times it’s ghost writers. In the first case, we see at least the body – but that ghost writer had a name, too. The first death spells the other as sure as the broken glass roof spelled Trelkovsky’s suicide; in both films we know the end from the beginning. The most conspicuous thing the ghost sees on the ferry are big red letters on the police poster: FATAL INCIDENT.

“He can’t drown two ghost writers, for god’s sake! You are not kittens.” This echoes The Tenant: “A tenant jumped out of the window.” – “Again? You must be getting them wholesale.”

The ghost refuses to assume MacAra’s identity; not that it changes anything. He has to put on the janitor’s cap and gloves instead, as if a sacrifice has to be dressed up, at some moment, for the ritual (besides The Tenant, the same trick is present in Frantic, Dance of the Vampires, Rosemary’s Baby, and Tess; on the contrary, the female protagonist in Che?, who succeeds in escaping, does so totally naked).

Trelkovsky is denied a first name; the ghost – any, like the Young Man in Knife in the Water. But the tenant’s last name was only used to brand him deeper: a Polack (desperately: “I am a French citizen!”). Carole (Repulsion) is a French woman in England, Oscar (Bitter Moon) an American in Paris, ditto Walker (Frantic); Nancy (Che?) an American in Italy, Szpilman (The Pianist) a Jew in the occupied Poland, Dean Corso (The Ninth Gate) an American in Europe, Prof.Abronsius and Alfred (Dance of the Vampires) strangers in a strange land…

The ghost is both nameless and a stranger: a perfect ghost indeed. Who is he anyway to be allowed to die before our eyes? Lang is a good candidate for a death in the limelight; the ghost can only die backstage. The possibility of inconspicuous death has already been hinted on: “If you turn left, the road will take you deeper into the woods, and you may never be seen again.” In bed with Ruth, he hugs her and momentarily throws one arm up: a white arm clearly seen in the dark room, like that of a drowning man.

Also interesting to note that even the dead ghostwriter, Mike McAra, is not only given a name, but has far more respect in death to many of the other characters in the film than the current ghostwriter has in life

he is, from the start, an awkward outsider at best, and a victim at worst…

… and thus he never did anything to earn a showy death. He allowed everyone to bully him (“Arcadia? A little organization I ran. Very high-brow, no reason you should have heard of it.” “Don’t worry, he isn’t always such a jerk.” “He is calling me ‘man’” – ‘He always does when he can’t remember someone’s name,” etc at infinitum). He allowed everyone to fool, to use, to play him. He allowed them to kill him, thus he won’t have the privilege of a grand death. All he earned is our – well, my – pity, sympathy and eternal gratitude for never betraying himself by becoming one of “them”, not in any way. But sheets of paper will be given more attention in the end.

“It’s quite symbolic and gives an end to the object he carries through the entire movie. It was important to have the manuscript almost as a character throughout the film, and therefore it was good to have it in the end floating, and giving it some kind of conclusion” (Polanski in an interview). Quite. The manuscript is there, the writer is not.

4. What’s so Funny?

The film being almost preternaturally elegant and intelligent, the comic side either works for the watcher fully, or escapes him altogether; it makes me happier than I can express that DD is with bears here yet again.

There’s something else that needs to be mentioned: the humour. I don’t know about anyone else, but there were plenty of times where I found this film to be absolutely fucking hysterical, something that’s rare to find in a really good thriller. Sometimes it’s from the awkwardness of the ghost writer, whether he’s intentionally trying to be funny or not,

It’s what I meant when I said I hated a generic witty dialog. The ghost makes clumsy jokes, as if he doesn’t know that a dialog in the thriller is supposed to be either informative or brilliant and snappy.

other times, it comes from moments where there’s not a word spoken. One of my favourite moments in particular comes from a look passed between Adam and his media-handler Amelia that’s both subtle and so fucking obvious at the same time it had me burst out laughing. Another classic moment is of course: “Some peace protestors are trying to kill me!” Absolutely love that line!

Oh, this is inexhaustible. “Langs are Scottish fold originally and proud of it. Our name is a derivation of ‘long’, the old English word for tall, and it is from north of the border that my forefathers hail. FUUUCK!!!” “Actually, I know a good writer on the Guardian who uses a gym.” “I’ve always been a passionate… no, strong… no, committed supporter of the work of the International Criminal Court... Has he?” etc etc etc

The scenes in the hotel are all hysterical, impending doom notwithstanding – or rather, thanks to impending doom. “This place really comes alive at night” – and the face of the driver, sniffling at the precisely right moment. The sign of Fisherman’s Cove Inn, reminding of old black-and-white horrors, and the receptionist in a costume. “You are the only guest in the hotel, sir.” All in all, The Ghost Writer is a comedy – just like The Tenant or, say, The Ninth Gate.

And, like The Ninth Gate, it is too subtle for its own good. Everyone loves humor, very few love irony. “It takes irony to appreciate the joke which is on oneself,” to quote Jessamyn West, and all the jokes in The Ghost Writer are, in the end, on ourselves.

What’s so funny, indeed? Oh, everything is. Any information can be googled, but woe is him who does - one can “ruin a good story with too much research”: the punchline is the death of the researcher(s). One doesn’t become a politician “out of love”, and “heart” is a word that can only be ridiculed. We hold on to life even though there doesn’t seem anything especially cozy or gratifying about it. We hold on to our dear humanity, too, although the only way to win is to shed it off and join the “guys”. The ultimate irony is that this way out is not accessible: we are different biological species. Hail, loser! R.I.P.

And as a conclusion…

I'm amazed to say it, but in the space of a few months, I have gone from someone who mainly enjoys science fiction and escapism films, or at least films designed to be mostly pure entertainment, to someone who is rapidly becoming more and more a fan of Polanski's heavily complex and multi-layered films. Quite an achievement you've made there Jean, I have to say!)

Well, my own contribution seems rather modest, comparing with the intrinsic value of the object… but it is awesome to hear!

[DoctorDodge]

I would say "wow", but I'm so used to your heavily detailed and well written reviews Jean that I can't use it, since it would imply some sort of surprise. I'm currently busy dealing with a fuckload of work at the moment, but I will aim to give you some discussion on your review later tonight or tomorrow. Thanks for using some of my quotes in this one, though!

[Jean]

[Seymour_Glass]

That scene at th end of the tenant is one of my favorites ever. It's so raw and bombastic, but Polanski makes it completely work.

[DoctorDodge]

Ok, so I know it's long overdue, but I've finally got an hour or two spare for some in-depth discussion of your review, Jean.

Sorry if bears are incoherent this time – weather conditions, you know – anyway, all the most important points have already been made by DD, in a clear and concise manner.

1. Entombed

The word “trapped” can be often heard in the analyses of the film; but trapped doesn’t begin to describe it. A trap is something finite, temporary: liberation is at least theoretically possible, and if the worst comes to the worst, death liberates one from any trap.

You can see the world outside when you are trapped. Or at least you know there is a world outside. Not so much so if you are walled in. Buried alive. Entombed. There sure is no escape, not even through death, and it feels like there is nothing but further walls and layers of soil in the world outside – which may very well be the case.

It is definitely the case with the bleak universe of The Ghost Writer. Everything is gray, brown, black with occasional alarming red. Whether it is the interior or the exterior, there is no elbow room: the two elements that normally symbolize all there is free and open – the sea and the sky – do everything to bury us deeper. The sky is never blue, always low, like a coffin lid.

The foghorns remind us that it is all too easy to lose one’s way in this murk. Desplat’s music doesn’t bring to mind any sunny side, either.

There is no difference between the walls made of bricks and the one made of glass: the latter shows nothing but yet another wall, that of fog, rain, and bleak landscape. When the alarm goes off and the shutter falls down, nothing really changes: it only gets a little darker. It’s not that we’re cut off from the rest of the world – the presence of the rest is questionable. There is a glass wall behind the shutter, and the wall of fog behind the glass wall, and nobody ever sees sunlight. Ours is a confined, walled-in, entombed universe.

The confines are everywhere, physical or social, those imposed by status or fate, the rules and regulations. The first word the ghost hears abroad is “Passport!” A bodyguard follows Adams on his morning jog. When the ghost walks the shore with Ruth, the security man is seen on the background between them, like the axis. These human confines are omnipresent. “Don’t wander around on your own, the security boys don’t like it.”

Once again, we come back to Polanski's theme of entrapment, of being completely unable to escape, and even the weather adds to this feeling. It's hard not to notice as the film goes on that there's not one sunny day we see - nothing but clouds for days and days and days. Yes, it's interesting to see how even the weather is against our main character's freedom.

Lang is the first person who looks incongruous: unlike the ghost, he wasn’t made for such environment. It’s him who is trapped: the idea of a trap involves a hope, to escape - to a brighter world.

Yes, Lang is the one who always feels the most agitated, the most confined in such a place. Everything about his manner is defensive, almost like the look of a man who assumes that everyone thinks he's guilty from when he first meets them. Never do we see him truly relax, either in his home or in front of a camera (one speech he made really made me laugh when he kept punching his hands to prove a point. The sign of many a corrupt dictator everywhere, I think). His house is a prison built specifically for him, which is of course ironic that he gets to leave it not even halfway through the film. He's not the victim, after all, he gets to leave his own prison whenever he wants!

The key to understanding this difference is the ghost’s apparent idiocy. He does all the wrong things. He says all the wrong words to all the wrong people. He investigates where he should stop, confronts those he should avoid at all costs, gives away everything and can’t keep his mouth shut under any circumstances, As if he doesn’t know he is the main character of a political thriller.

But no, he doesn’t know this, that’s the point! He behaves exactly as any sane person would: he assumes they are all human beings around him. Exactly like I know I would if I were him. There is nothing that can’t be talked over, among people. The fact that we are all alive, endowed with speech and reason, is what matters and is actually present; the remote considerations of power, big money, and political careers are something out of books, they do not apply to the world we are living in; we might know that people kill for them, but do we really feel it?

He doesn’t know how high the stakes are, because there have never been any stakes, high or low, in his own experience. He knows, intellectually, that his predecessor was killed, but he has nothing in his experience that could make him really fathom this. Like all of us, he believes he is immortal; in his experience or personality there is nothing that would warrant such a majestic thing as becoming a victim of a political murder.

His experience is exactly like ours. He is just like us, who would blurt out anything to a human being that happened to be nearby. If we knew we lived in a political thriller with no happy ending, the kind where the protagonist dies, we might all behave differently; but we, none of us, know what is the genre of our flick.

That's another thing I enjoyed about this film - this isn't some investigative reporter who knows exactly what to do in the kind of situation he's in, because he really doesn't know what situation he's in. He's not some kind of reporter out for the truth - hell, he doesn't want anything to do with exposing what little he's found until he's threatened to do it - he's just doing a job that basically involves writing for someone else. Hardly a job that anyone would kill over, is it? And even though the previous one died, as you pointed out Jean, there's absolutely no reason the same thing would happen to him. From his point of view, anyway.

The film begins and ends with a death; we do not actually see anyone die either time. Both times it’s ghost writers. In the first case, we see at least the body – but that ghost writer had a name, too. The first death spells the other as sure as the broken glass roof spelled Trelkovsky’s suicide; in both films we know the end from the beginning. The most conspicuous thing the ghost sees on the ferry are big red letters on the police poster: FATAL INCIDENT.

“He can’t drown two ghost writers, for god’s sake! You are not kittens.” This echoes The Tenant: “A tenant jumped out of the window.” – “Again? You must be getting them wholesale.”

Yes, every possible sign is not only telling us but also telling him that taking the job would be a bad idea from the start: even when Rick is recommending it to him, he casually mentions how with the previous ghost writer "it was the book that killed him." "Well, that's encouraging!" he replies, knowing that taking the job would be a bad idea, and yet he still goes to the interview (before which he's actually told by someone that he's not the right man for the job in the first place), still decides to go along with it even when he gets easily knocked down in the street and robbed. He's warned from a start that the whole thing is a trap, and yet still, he willingly walks into it.

Also interesting to note that even the dead ghostwriter, Mike McAra, is not only given a name, but has far more respect in death to many of the other characters in the film than the current ghostwriter has in life

he is, from the start, an awkward outsider at best, and a victim at worst…

… and thus he never did anything to earn a showy death. He allowed everyone to bully him (“Arcadia? A little organization I ran. Very high-brow, no reason you should have heard of it.” “Don’t worry, he isn’t always such a jerk.” “He is calling me ‘man’” – ‘He always does when he can’t remember someone’s name,” etc at infinitum). He allowed everyone to fool, to use, to play him. He allowed them to kill him, thus he won’t have the privilege of a grand death. All he earned is our – well, my – pity, sympathy and eternal gratitude for never betraying himself by becoming one of “them”, not in any way. But sheets of paper will be given more attention in the end.

Even Lang's wife doesn't like him that much, insulting him how he's not a proper writer, even when she's not-so-subtly trying to seduce him. Well, maybe seduce isn't the right word. That implies that she wants to have sex with him, that she feels attracted to him. And yet not once did I feel the slightest bit of genuine sexual tension between the two, not once did I sense feelings of lust for each other. No, she just wanted to use him for nothing more than the sake of sex itself, and he allowed her to do it, despite knowing it was a bad idea. Which reflects how he was seen and actually was in general, really. Yes, a showy death was far from what he deserved.

The scenes in the hotel are all hysterical, impending doom notwithstanding – or rather, thanks to impending doom. “This place really comes alive at night” – and the face of the driver, sniffling at the precisely right moment. The sign of Fisherman’s Cove Inn, reminding of old black-and-white horrors, and the receptionist in a costume. “You are the only guest in the hotel, sir.” All in all, The Ghost Writer is a comedy – just like The Tenant or, say, The Ninth Gate.

Another example of Polanski combining the surreal and disturbing with the hilarious. Yes, those hotel scenes always felt like he was unsure if he was in the wrong genre by mistake, I think.

And as a conclusion…

I'm amazed to say it, but in the space of a few months, I have gone from someone who mainly enjoys science fiction and escapism films, or at least films designed to be mostly pure entertainment, to someone who is rapidly becoming more and more a fan of Polanski's heavily complex and multi-layered films. Quite an achievement you've made there Jean, I have to say!)

Well, my own contribution seems rather modest, comparing with the intrinsic value of the object… but it is awesome to hear!

Well Jean, you pointed me in the direction of his work, of the titles that perhaps get a little overlooked compared to his other films, and it really has opened my eyes, I think. Honestly, I'm not sure if I ever would've watched either Cul-de-Sac or The Tenant without your recommendations specifically, so I'm grateful for that. I know the discussion on your review on The Ghost isn't much, but I hope you enjoy what little there is, at least.

[Seymour_Glass]

Just finished rewatching the ghost writer, as we yanks call it. I'll be back with some thoughts/responses.

[Jean]

oh please do! and you were going to watch Cul-de-Sac too, right?

at the moment bears are relishing DD's latest comments - he managed, yet again, to point out a few things that had escaped bears, and to provide food for thought.

[DoctorDodge]

Just finished rewatching the ghost writer, as we yanks call it. I'll be back with some thoughts/responses.

Looking forward to reading them, Seymour! Polanski's films have been some of the most multilayered films I've seen, so it's always great to read and discuss another view on it.

at the moment bears are relishing DD's latest comments - he managed, yet again, to point out a few things that had escaped bears, and to provide food for thought.

Glad that I'm able to do so! Naturally, as always, your review covered so much that I couldn't see, so many layers that I missed. Again, why I enjoy this board: it's the only place I can ever fully discuss such movies at.

Also, as a Withnail & I fan, I'm still eager to read the possible essay you mentioned on comparing the film with Polanski's style and works. The fact that such a comparison can be made is certainly a fascinating one to me!

[Jean]

... and a wonderful excuse for me to watch W&I again so soon!... will do at the beginning of the week

Now am meditating on two of your points:

those hotel scenes always felt like he was unsure if he was in the wrong genre by mistake, I think.

He's warned from a start that the whole thing is a trap, and yet still, he willingly walks into it.

I think I'll go back to these after the W&I review.

[Jean]

[Seymour_Glass]

The thing about The Ghost Wrier is that the Ghost is motivated not by self preservation, but curiosity. He knowingly puts himself in danger, not to expose Lang, but to find the secret, to prove to himself that he's smart enough.

[frik]

I have no idea, Jean, if you're even remotely interested in this type of thing, but just in case, here it is.
Little Shoppe of Horrors the one of the best fanzines ever, running for decades. It's mainly a Hammer oriented magazine, focusing on these great British horror movies from way back, but occasionally a non-Hammer flick is squeezed in. Like the upcoming issue:



As The Fearless Vampire Killers is one of my favorite Polanski movies ever (Rosemary's Baby being #1) I can't wait for this issue. Should be a great read.

If interested, check this out!

http://www.littleshoppeofhorrors.com/



sk

[Jean]

bears might be not interested in "this type" of things, but they definitely are interested in everything Polanski-related! thank you frik!

The thing about The Ghost Wrier is that the Ghost is motivated not by self preservation, but curiosity. He knowingly puts himself in danger, not to expose Lang, but to find the secret, to prove to himself that he's smart enough.

Yes, this, of course! that's what a normal human being would be motivated with; the one that never grew up enough to understand that he is living in a very serious world, and a totally pitiless one.

[Seymour_Glass]

Just watched Knife In the Water for a class.

[Jean]

oh! one of my favorite films ever

[Seymour_Glass]

It was very good. It's far from my favorite Polanski, but you can see the groundwork for all his future works in there. I quite enjoyed the levity of parts of it, how easygoing it was with the more sinister undercurrents.

[Jean]

you can see the groundwork for all his future works in there. I quite enjoyed the levity of parts of it, how easygoing it was with the more sinister undercurrents.

[Jean]

1. The Other Tenants

I already wrote a lot about the main theme of all Polanski movies: the victim vs. the torturer(s) – where the latter are denied all humanity, being only monsters, agents of the pitiless order of the universe. Whether or not the other tenants in The Tenant have any independent reality, what they do when they are not tormenting him, what relationships they form, what they talk about when they are on their own, was totally irrelevant to the essence of the film; well, now we know. We even know that, after all, they have some – however imperfect – humanity.

Let me introduce them: The Longstreets, Penelope and Michael; The Cowans, Nancy and Alan. What they do in the absence of their rightful victim is, obviously enough, torturing one another. Every one of the four knows how to do it in his or her own way, every one is full of their specific kind of venom, and use their particular weapons with the subtlety or bluntness their nature requires.

The power play starts right away, and the kids’ fight we saw in the prologue is only what it is – baby squabble – comparing with these heavyweights shaking hands on the boxing ring: “Armed?..” – everyone turns, and that’s how we come to see the whole gang. This “armed” will echo later, but now everyone is ostensibly oh so happy with the compromise. Alan tries to maintain his independence by saying: “the kids haven’t got that notion [sense of community] straight yet”, but a glance from his wife makes him hastily correct himself: “I mean, our kid”. Unfortunately, a peaceful solution doesn’t really satisfy anyone here: the thirst is not quenched, and they will be back to square one, to the room that will from now on be their jail cell.

“These tulips are gorgeous!” Like in all Polanski films, the inanimate objects act their parts, and the tulips (straight from Holland) will be the axis of every scene until the very moment they fly, scattered. In the language of flowers, mind you, yellow tulips represent cheerful thoughts and sunshine.

Cheerful thoughts are the farthest possible from anyone’s mind, their contrived smiles notwithstanding. After the “armed” gag failed, Penelope is worried the other side are missing the point, and endeavors to drive it home as soon as an opportunity presents itself.

“He didn’t want to tell on Zachary. It was incredible to see this child, with no face left, no teeth…” This seemingly pointless exaggeration means she insists they fully understand the magnitude of her fair-mindedness, forgiveness, maturity and sense of community, bordering on holiness. They – themselves fair-minded, mature and full of sense of community - swallow it for the moment; but they will avenge.

Back to the room, the troops regroup, and the single winner is Alan who speaks on the phone. The others can’t find anything to say to one another, and since civilized people don’t interrupt a phone conversation, they stand like a group of statues, reflected in the mirror on the wall (another object that will fully play its part), pretending there’s nothing uneasy in their silence. Alan is the only one who is sitting – on the table. This alone would suffice to antagonize them.

Other antagonisms blossom everywhere. “So, you are telling everyone I am a writer?” reveals a shit ton of resentment festering inside this particular happy family.

“And good lord, his direction! Shooting in widescreen cinemascope, Polanski crams these people into increasingly tighter frames, teaming up the actors in elegant arrangements that visually convey the power dynamics within their relationships as the conversation turns, from moment to moment. You can watch Carnage with the sound turned off, and still understand who is winning an argument just by looking at the blocking. It’s masterful work.” (Sean Burns, of Philadelphia weekly.) Quite. Watch them standing, sitting, walking, regrouping.

Now the women are uneasy, alone in the room. An art album comes to rescue, and they peruse it, standing in fantastically uncomfortable poses. “Bacon?” – “Yes, Bacon.” “Cruelty and splendor” – “Chaos, balance”. Penelope wins this round.

“Gingerbread, fantastic!” Alan overreacts, but this won’t make up for his having comfortably sat, oblivious of them all standing - especially not after his phone rings again, and scene repeats: the ostensibly not awkward silence, the mirror, and only one winner, who is eating while talking – thus paying no due respect to the cobbler, - and, to add insult to injury, gesturing with the culinary masterpiece on the prongs of his fork. All this is as improper as dancing at a funeral, so no wonder the cremation theme creeps up. It is promptly smothered: civilized people don’t talk about cremation while eating apple and pear cobbler. They’d much rather have small talk about the difference between pies and cakes; and then it comes to light that Ethan has a gang. Now we see (if we haven’t already) that Penelope is embarrassed by her husband. Writers don’t have such husbands; bookstore assistants might. Jimmy Leach is too much for her to take, and the unseaming starts. “Why do you feel you need to slip in the word 'deliberately'?” is the first open hostility of this, second, stage of the war, and the first genuine fight comes directly after this: between the men this time. “Nobody said you should listen to my conversation” – “Nobody said you should have it under my nose”. Now the strain gets its physiological manifestation, and Nancy throws up splendidly, magnificently, uncivilly and unsubtly.

One of the critics who intensely disliked the movie but couldn’t find any real fault with it, clung to this: why didn’t she go to the bathroom? But let’s see what immediately precedes the event: “If we decide to reprimand our child, we’ll do it in our own way and on our own terms.” Pen’s husband mistakenly agrees, it’s their kid and they are free – and Penelope declares, “No, they are not free!” Here’s when Nancy begins to act irrationally. It’s just too much. First she jumps at her husband, next vomits all over the place and, naturally, right over the rest of the cobbler. And a Kokoshka album, for good measure.

Oh, Penelope will make the most of it. She will be brokenhearted over her Kokoshka, but brisk and efficient (stressed or not, she doesn’t omit to cover the bed) – as a mature human being should be after her guests have (at last! at last!) exposed themselves as crude barbarians.
“Her husband’s in the bathroom” – “He is not on the can!”; “Where’s the blow-dryer” – “He is drying his pants.” She even manage a civilized smile – but when Nancy says, “I don’t know what to say. I am so sorry” – the answer is meaningful silence. Now Penelope can afford it: they have played into her hands.

And when the Cowans are in the bathroom, cursing the cobbler, the Longstreets spray tulips with perfume, cursing, respectively, the other wife and husband: once again it’s the Cowans against the Longstreets, the latter winning by miles. But lo! One faux pas – “he calls her Doodle” – and the roles are reversed, it’s the Longstreets now that have to get all defensive, while Alan can just stand there like an implacable prosecutor, not accepting their feeble babblings. Now it’s the Cowans who have been victimized, and they will use it fully. Every word will serve as a good weapon now, this way or another. “Snitch”. “Armed”. “Gang”. The following three minutes are, in my opinion, the most perfect and the most hilarious of the whole perfect and hilarious movie, and climaxing with Michael’s “You certainly perked up since you lost your cookies”.

Then there’s a screaming Hamster Battle on the landing – no prisoners taken – and the observer appears, played by Polanski himself, in a Hitchcockian cameo appearance (he had done it once before in Frantic). Of course Penelope won’t have this; back to the perfumed tulips. Wow, the Longstreets are defending again, and the Cowans have an upper hand! The hamster is nuclear weapon in this apparently small, but essentially devastating war. Momentarily everyone gangs up on Michael, and he flies off his rocker.

And so it will proceed. Regrouping. Alliances. Hostilities. The subtle art of humiliation and insult grows less subtle with every second. Scotch creates a new alliance: men against women; Alan utters an unpalatable: “Women think too much”, then he insults her Book about Sufferings in Africa; Michael, for his part, says things about marriage, family, and kids. Cigars are offered, but things haven’t gone so horribly far as to actually smoke yet: this last bastion still stands.

Not for long, though: things escalate, the men smoke, Nancy gets ready to throw up again (“Can you stand over the bucket, please? I mean, we’re already set up to handle this now”), any word can be used as a weapon, so no wonder a weapon-word will: thumper. Once before Michael “forgot” the perpetrator’s name (“What’s his name – Zachary – “), now, at long last, Alan retaliates by calling Michael himself “Stephen”. Every little helps.

The one and only time the women form an alliance is when they laugh about the men’s pathetic attempts to save the cell phone (drowned in the tulip vase, of course), but like every alliance based on the wrong principle, it crumbles as soon as Nancy gets the second breath: “Both sides should take the blame”. – “Excuse me?!” The bag flies, Penelope triumphs: “The victim and the criminal are not the same!”

Victim and criminal; no face left, no teeth; armed with a stick; disfigured his schoolmate. Exaggeration is the most cowardly of all deadly weapons, and Polanski knows it like few people on earth do.

Nobody here deserves our pity or our compassion. Closer to the end there’s something approaching peace in the Cowan family. Why? Because the Longstreets are falling apart before their very eyes. What an ignoble cause for satisfaction.

With no genuine victim in sight, Polanski has no-one to identify with – unless it is the hamster. Homeless and defenseless as it may be, it never tortured or humiliated anyone – and is free to go, unlike those people in their makeshift dungeon.

2. Maybe We’ll Talk This Over

But why are they there, indeed? Why don’t the Cowans just leave, why don’t the Longstreets just let them go? They were already out, the compromise was reached, what brought them back?

Ah, but there’s still some issues, some dissatisfaction – nothing, of course, a good civilized talk can’t mend. Alan agreed that it would be good if the kids talked; but “talk” is not what the other side wants. Is Zachary sorry? Is he really sorry? The Longstreets feel they failed to get their point through, and there’s this shadow (aggravated by the ghost of the hamster) that neither side can afford. They can’t part on such a note, while not everything is just right, with shadows lurking and important issues hanging in the air, unresolved; doing so would mean admitting immaturity, inability to settle things like adult, cultured, fair-minded people with a real sense of community should. This is why they go back – this, not any “coffee”, however good, let alone “cobbler”.

Maybe we’ll talk this over, maybe we’ll both get sober. (Dylan)

The first part of movie is all about this pendulum: everything is more or less settled – but more or less is not enough – the point hasn’t been driven through by either side – a shadow passes – we can’t leave on this note. A word is said (“But he realizes that he disfigured his schoolmate?” - “No, he doesn’t realize that he disfigured his schoolmate.”) and everyone is back to square one, because this word is so much more than just a word: it is a sign that the pendulum is ready for another cycle. As soon as they agree on the time of the next meeting, with the kids and the due apologies, Michael deals this decisive blow: “Zachary should come over here. The victim shouldn’t be the one who makes the trip”, and this word resets everything. This is what holds them together, not the absence of reception in the elevator.

Surely now they’ll talk some more and settle everything at last. Talk is an essential achievement of civilization. Penelope is scandalized when she learns that Zachary won’t talk about “it”: “He should! He should talk about it!”, in her indignation (not talking is tantamount to flipping off everything generations of liberals have been fighting for) going just a tiny step too far, and this is when Alan really snaps at her for the first time (and a dog starts barking on the background). Now there’s no leaving. Back to the tulips.

“Coffee?” It means: let’s at last dot all the is, cross all the ts, and mend everything once and forever. Nancy smiles, nods, and prompts her husband: “Thank you”. He growls, “Coffee all right…” It means: “Ok, let’s try again.”

Later, Nancy is so shocked by her own improper behavior that she is the first to sense the flaw of the scheme, the viciousness of the circle, and moans (in the bathroom): “What the hell are we doing here?” But one can’t just puke over priceless Kokoshka and leave; so she will attack instead. After she does, the guests are clearly unwelcome; time to go?

We know by now that they will never leave. None of them will admit defeat – not only being beaten by the other side, but defeat of their civilized values, failure to “talk this over” like adult, progressive people. We can’t leave a festering sore behind us, right? We got to do something about it. One never knows when it’s time to cut one’s losses.

After the Battle of the Hamster, no further attempts to leave will be undertaken. They are all living there.

They often say that in many Polanski movies there’s one and the same essential flaw: the buildup results in nothing, and the first part of the film is a lot better than the second (Dance of the Vampires, The Tenant, Tess, The Ninth Gate, The Ghost Writer, and now Carnage). I totally agree that the first three quarters in all those cases are more promising than the final quarter. The first three quarters are elegant, brisk, “practically perfect in every respect”; then everything starts crumbling.

I wish we would step aside the conventional frame of what a movie should or shouldn’t be, and see the bigger picture. I agree that Polanski sacrifices entertainment quality and formal perfection, and I am sure he is doing it on purpose (indeed, he has proved enough times that he can make a totally perfect film). In the last quarter, everything deteriorates – because it does. Ultimately, the slippage of the universe must be reflected in a work of art that endeavors to honestly depict it, and it’s the highest self-denial from the part of the creator, who refuses a possible rounding up, fulfillment of every promise, catharsis and everyone’s total satisfaction, in favor of showing how exactly everything loses momentum, slips away, gets bogged down, stalls, loses coherence, dies. These people won’t have anything resembling a closure. They are stuck there, with their doomed attempts at breaking the walls of their prison with inadequate tools.

3. Pontypool

Their tools aren’t inadequate because they are “only words”: there’s nothing as powerful as words. No, their tools are inadequate because the words they use are dead.

“It’s so much better than getting caught up in this adversarial mindset… Luckily, some of us still have a sense of community”

Modern psychology played a dirty practical joke on the formerly glorious English language; there’s nothing that can’t be labeled nowadays. One always knows what syndrome one has, what exactly one is going through (midlife crisis or liberating experience), how to define that elusive feeling one is afraid to call “love” (significant other), what other people are like (controlling, manipulative; compliant, avoidant), how to avoid caring and loving (not ready for commitment) or to justify one’s behaving like a total jerk (uninhibited; positive). Everything is put into its cell, given a name that seems to mean something; then, insidiously, people start living up to these words. They don’t only know what they are feeling – they know what they are supposed to feel or to be. Inevitably, they feel – and are – exactly what is expected of them. Every feeling, every experience is unique; but they get reduced to a common denominator – and so do personalities themselves.

“If Zachary sees Ethan in a punitive context, I really don’t see anything positive coming out of that.”
“Accountability skills”.
“I am living with this totally negative person”.
“We all have to be collectively concerned”.

But when even the slightest shit hits the fan, none of this works. And if the whole universe was based on those empty words, the whole universe falls apart – as soon as the slightest shit hits the fan.

They, these pathetic painted sepulchers, have lost their living souls in this drivel, the rigmarole of superficial values reducible to hollow words.

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean. (Matthew 23:27)

I’ve just watched Polanski’s interview of May ’86, where he is asked what he hates most in people. “L’hypocrisie”, he says, “Fausseté. Mensonge.” Hypocrisy. Falsity. Lie.

Everyone who tries to fit his unique humanity into a prescribed cell, betrays himself and turns into a false lying hypocrite. There’s nothing easier – and cheaper - than care about the Darfur tragedy. “I know everything about suffering in Africa. I’ve been thinking about it for months”. When her husband, having learned from the bitter experience, tries to warn Alan not to start her on this, she physically attacks him – the first, and almost the only, outburst of actual violence in the film. (“Talk about commitment to world peace and stability,” – Alan).

Don’t think it’s only Penelope. Nancy, a much simpler soul, hasn’t learned all these words yet; but what Alan does is only turning them around, never really leaving the same vicious circle. His cynicism and Penelope’s demagogy are the heads and tails of the same coin. They are all confined inside the same cell, just as well as they are all confined in that room: Penelope is born and raised there, Nancy trying to fit in; the men both pretending they are different.

“My wife dressed me up as a liberal… but I am just a short-tempered son of a bitch,” says Michael (to which Alan, expectedly, replies, “We all are”). “I am not being aggressive, I am being honest”. But there can’t be any honesty there, not ever: it’s either hypocrisy or its flipside, aggression. Some critics suggested that Alan is honest in his own cynical way, but honesty is so much more than telling people nasty things in their faces. You either stay in the cell, or cling to its walls from the outside, attacking the ones who are inside, it’s six of one, half a dozen of the other. Nobody takes a step aside, where the frightening land of honesty, truth, genuineness and integrity is rapidly becoming untrodden.

“You’re blowing this out of proportion,” yells Michael at Penelope. Interesting that this peacemaking sentence is the first someone here actually shouts. “Enough with this politically correct bullshit,” he says, only to replace it with the bullshit that is only the illegitimate son of this same political correctness. “I feel like being openly despicable”: he has made the same career of this as his wife of being “advocate for civilized behavior”. There’s no essential difference. The only genuinely honest sentence was uttered by Nancy: “I am glad my son kicked the shit out of your son!”

Well, yes, this is honest; but really, people? When you stop lying, this is the only kind of honesty that’s left? Is this why the political correctness was invented – because without it you’ll smash the world to pieces? Or is it the other way – the words have poisoned your minds, emptied your souls, turned you into zombies, and the only hope for human race is that your kids will refuse to use your poisonous words, and either go back to the old ones, or will have to invent a whole new language, where killiskiss.

4. People in Glass Houses

Careful what you say! You say “these two little shits” as a figure of speech, and mother, in all seriousness, says tragically “So, Ethan is a shit now!” Watch your tongue, watch your steps, watch your everything – people who live in glass houses can’t throw stones.

Well… what else can’t they do? Move furniture, hang pictures, dance, sing high notes? Snore? Sneeze? Talk? Whisper? The walls are not getting any more solid, and the number of taboos grows exponentially.

Why the fuck did they choose to live in a glass house anyway?

Which is the hen, which is the egg? Have we bound ourselves in this web because otherwise the beast will get loose from inside us, and demolish our precious glass house? Or have we deliberately refused to build the house of solid bricks, to deal with our problems openly, and thus nurtured the beast which grows stronger with every new ban imposed? Irony and pity, humor and open talk, honesty, love and courage, - when exposed to all this, the beast decays, it’s our hypocrisy, pettiness and cowardice that feed him.

“So many parents just take their kid’s sides, acting like children themselves”. If only. No, guys, while you are entrapped in that room with no way out, your children have made up and are playing together on that same playground.

Because the kids haven’t build their own glass houses… yet.

[Brice]

Bears make me want to watch The Tenant again. Actually while I know I've seen parts of it; I'm not sure I've ever seen the whole movie. I believe we have it around here somewhere.


Oh, and what Polanski hates most is what I hate most too; both within others and myself.

[Jean]

... and yes, Brice, watch The Tenant! at least out of curiosity - what is the bears' all-time-favorite film like as a whole?

Do we have an "all-time favorite" thread here, by the way? I think if anyone has something like that (besides DD and bears), I would love to watch every one. I know I didn't fail with DD's.

P.S. Oh yes, and watch Carnage, too!

[Brice]

I will look for them.


Bears do not like Brice's all time favorite.

[fernandito]

We have the '25 Favorite Films' thread, is that what you meant Jean ?

[Jean]

No, 25 is 25 - everyone can come up with 25 favorite films, and only a few maniacs have The Film of their lives.

Brice!!! how can it be?? which one was it????

P.S. And don't forget Cul-de-Sac! you were going to watch it two years ago...

[Brice]

ACO ACO ACO!


See, told ya'!

Brices are very forgetful things.

[Jean]

Brice - I adored ACO, cinema-wise. It's one of the most perfect, well acted, fantastically shot and awesomely directed films I've ever seen. It's just that the idea itself is something I've been opposed to all my life. I hope we'll talk about it once - do we have a Kubrick thread, by the way? He is one of the biggest ones.