I just received Polanski's Macbeth in the mail. I do believe I watched it, decades ago, but I'm not sure. At least now it's part of my DVD collection.
sk
I just received Polanski's Macbeth in the mail. I do believe I watched it, decades ago, but I'm not sure. At least now it's part of my DVD collection.
sk
I love The Tragedy of Macbeth. The critics are sometimes harsh on it, because they think the poetry is lost in all the gore and dark passion; also because the actors just speak Shakespeare's lines as they would in every-day life, not as if they were reciting poetry. I personally find it a big advantage. Also love it how young both Macbeth and his lady are, it kinda explains things in a more sinister way than the usual way they are pictured; also love all the visual additions that put things in the play in entirely different light without changing a single word. (bears have more to say on the subject, and eventually will)
Ask not what bears can do for you, but what you can do for bears. (razz)
When one is in agreement with bears one is always correct. (mae)
bears are back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
RIP Sharon, forgive the stupid bear
I so wish I didn’t have to write this.
“The 60's abruptly ended on August 9, 1969, the date of the murders on Cielo Drive.” (Joan Didion, The White Album, a collection of essays on life in the 60s).
Headlines of the period: “Ritual Murder”. “Film Star Dies in Ritual Massacre”. Why, of course, isn’t it clear, and so irresistibly exciting – husband makes a satanist movie, and wife dies in a satanist murder. The only problem is that neither was satanist.
I already said, in the first post of this thread, what, to my mind, Rosemary’s Baby is first and foremost about. In a sense, it really is prophetic, like any Polanski movie – this time it is about what an organized group can do to someone they single out as their target, - and the media behaved exactly the way “all them witches” would. The second aspect is that, if anything, it is anti-satanist, with the witches being what they are: nosy neighbors, solicitous uncles and aunties, they are indeed horrible, but not the romantic, fascinating, demonic “horrible” that could be expected of worshippers of some great Evil, but the disgusting, repulsive, petty, shitty “horrible” of a rotten swamp you hardly notice until you put your foot on the surface, and then it slowly consumes you and there’s no way out. The third point is that we never know if there is a devil. It might all as well be either Rosemary’s personal delusion or, more likely, the group delusion of that collective entity – highly contageous, highly dangerous (something an escapee of Communism understood better, I’m afraid, than his Western audience – another topic to be developed later), entrapping Rosemary in their own insanity.
“Well, - I wanted the film to be ambiguous, particularly the ending.” (Rosemary’s Baby Retrospective Interviews). Well, - there are times when subtlety is welcome, and there are when it is not. All Polanski movies are like that, by the way – they beat you over the head with an axe, at the same time demanding that you be subtle in perception; that’s why they should be watched more than once, or else you lose too much while busy picking your brains from the floor.
Sharon
“Certainly it was a happy time. For all of us. Roman was happy, he was with beautiful Sharon. Everyone loved her. He loved her, I loved her, we all loved her” (Mia Farrow). It seems true, about “everyone”. She is said to be sweet, intelligent, talented; above all, kind. "In the six years that I knew her, she never said an unkind word about anyone" (Sheila Wells, a friend).
I will not dwell on Dance of the Vampires today because it’s heartbreaking, the sponge, the snowman and all. There’s footage of the filmmaking, part of which inevitably appears in all documentals addressing Polanski-Tate love story: he says to her, “Look at him, not at me, ok?” - and although it is obviously usual instructions given by the director to an actress, there seems to be something augural about it, with all that snow in their hair and the whole scenery so fairy-taleish.
Watching whatever was filmed about their family life is even worse, because it shows such a model couple that one could die of envy, until one remembered how it all ended. I suspect they were a model couple of the sixties, with some ideas on freedom which now may seem unacceptable, but really, honi soit qui mal y pense. Everyone is entitled to their own understanding of love, as Nikolett pointed out to me on multiple occasions, and love is what permeates all their family-life footage I’ve seen.
“I was thinking, I am happy now, I really am happy and I don’t want anything else.” (Polanski in Mike Wallace interview, 1978)
"They were the Douglas Fairbanks/Mary Pickford of our time... Cool, nomadic, talented and nicely shocking." (Peter Evans)
"Marriage vows mean nothing to him but few men have adored a woman as much as he adored Sharon." (Laurence Harvey)
“One hoped for Roman, you know, that this brand-new life with a woman who loved him and who seemed so right for him, with the baby – that there would be this security that he hadn’t had in his life. And in a new homeland. I mean, the future was his. We thought. Then everything just collapsed.” (Mia Farrow)
The Tragedy and the Aftermath
I would no more analyze the motifs and psychology of Charles Manson than I would that of a cockroach. I had to read something – much more than he deserves or I wanted – and listen to his interviews, just to be able to form my own opinion; this feeling of having touched a cockroach still lingers. He wasn’t, of course, a Satanist, just like he wasn’t Jesus Christ or nazi (although on some occasions he sported a swastika on his forehead – that’s a nice finishing touch for our story) or anything at all, actually, except a born leader of a totalitarian sect revolving around the cult of his own personality, with a typical 60s mess in his head. The mess, however incoherent, was strongly cemented by his own insane charisma, thus made irresistible for the ones lost in the seemingly endless choice of ideas that the 60s offered and incapable of existing by themselves: ready cannon meat for a messiah-centered group; the slogan “no sense makes sense” was bound to be widely appealing.
Why his gang did what they did is not a secret, either (and for all the leftist “Helter Skelter” rhetorics, the correct answer is “just because”). For some especially deep-minded thinkers, he will always be the epitome of, er, free rebellious spirit. Jerry Rubin wrote, “His words and courage inspired us” (We Are Everywhere). As you wish; or, as a Russian saying goes, stick the banner up your ass and march.
Anyway, they killed her, and other people with her (and, later, other people elsewhere), and there was that phone call to London, and Andrew Braunsberg, producer who had come to discuss with Polanski a new movie that would never be made (other than with Mike Nichols as the director, in 1971), would say many years later, “I have never seen anything like it, you know, I saw somebody just disintegrate in front of my eyes.”
And then the real witches’ sabbath started, in the media. The initial of-course-he-killed-her-who-else and of-course-it-was-all-drug-dealing-what-else nonsense soon (well, what is soon? How does it feel, reading that you killed your wife and baby?) more or less died out, unfed; but something else remained, like, forever; at that time it was immortalized in headlines like “Those Sharon Tate Orgies”. The murdered people were blamed for their own death. Headline: "Live Freaky, Die Freaky".
Andrew Braunsberg says that Polanski “was devastated to a point I have never seen any other human being in that kind of condition”; but on August 19 he mistakenly decided he was strong enough to face the media and try to protect his wife’s good name. It was a pathetic attempt. Only recently first after God on the set of Rosemary’s Baby, now it was a scared miserable kid, like his mother has just been taken to Auschwitz, all over again, and ka is a fucking wheel, amen.
“You are suddenly curious about my relationship with Sharon within last few months. I can tell you that last few months as much as last few years I spent with her were [the] only time of true happiness in my life.” Words stick in the throat, he spits them out one by one, eyes blind with tears, accent heavier than ever before. “All of you know how beautiful she was. […]Very often I’ve read and heard statement that she was one of most beautiful if not the most beautiful woman of the world. But only few of you know how good she was.”
This word “good” almost made me cry for its incongruity, impropriety in the face of all those jackals, flashes and cameras and all, but the worst is yet to come: “And facts which will be coming out, day after day, will make ashame[d] a lot of newsmen, who for a selfish reason write unbearable for me, horrible things about my wife.”
“Ashamed”. Oh good Lord. I would say it was by that speech that he perpetuated the image of himself as a perfect target. It’s, like, impossible not to throw a knife at someone who paints a bull’s eye on his chest. But I already developed the subject in The Tenant post.
Which reminds me… there’s that scene when the tenant drinks with that poor chap who loved Simone and has just learned about her death; a group of robust men enter the bar and their leader yells: “Drinks for everyone!.. Everyone except him!” – and points at the chap. That’s how the world chooses its prey, unmistakably.
The “selfish reason” isn’t only lucrative: it must be enjoyable to write something that will be enjoyable for a reader to read; but more important, sensationalism is akin to any other branch of sadism: it can’t be sated; and a wonderful, savory news of five bloody murders can’t taper off to something as bland and boring as compassion, either for the dead or for the living.
November 19 (shit, 19 again), 1978, Mike Wallace (60 minutes) interviews Polanski in France.
“When the whole tragedy happened, I was running and trying to help the police, doing all kinds of things to find those culprits, there was this irrational anger, if I could have them, I would kill them. But when they were found, I just felt no… er… belligerence towards them. I just felt nothing. I just – don’t want to have anything to do with them. I don’t care what happens to them. That’s not going to change anything. She’s gone -”
Of course, this was exactly the right moment for the journalist to strike:
“There were so many stories about kinky sex, and about drug taking, and about self-indulgence and about [shakes head and makes an all-encompassing gesture that may singify anything. – Jean]… What kind of a life did you people live, was it – “
“But look, Mike, - I am not criticizing you for it, you try to make – to put your questions the way the audience will for a moment stop eating and start listening to you, and what will remain in their mind it’s this headline <…> that I have read many many times, and not what I am going to answer to you, - because if I tell you that we lived quietly, that we had quiet evenings and listened to the music and that Sharon was a lovely cook, it will all seem like alibying, and will serve no purpose.” Precisely.
I especially like – besides the accusations of Satanism that really take the cake – the constant harping on drug theme. “Sharon not only didn’t use drugs, she didn’t touch alcohol, she didn’t smoke cigarettes.” (August 19, 1969 statement) – which sounds perfectly true to me since she was an actress who took good care of her looks, and later, pregnant and crazy about the fact, - "as if she had invented having babies" someone said. Polanski himself smoked grass, like everybody else, but for God’s sake, does anyone ever stop to imagine what a movie director’s job involves? It takes brains, you know, in such quality and condition as I’m afraid no other job I can think of, and frying them with the constant use of heavy drugs he is occasionally accused of when all other grounds for accusation grow old on the public would seem hardly probable.
“In my house were parties where people did smoke pot. And I must tell you furthermore that I was not at a Hollywood party where somebody didn’t smoke pot.” (August 19, 1969 statement). Right, everybody did at that time, but nobody’s pregnant wives were murdered; the logic behind those reasonings is faultless. The case brought to life many more fascinating examples of people’s brainlessness, like after December 8, 1980: see? Dakota – Lennon - Helter Skelter – Manson – Sharon Tate – Polanski – Rosemary’s Baby – Dakota. And Polanski, the lifelong agnostic, skeptic and scoffer, who never gave a shit for anything “supernatural” and openly stated it in both conversation and movies, will be, in the minds of those who have brains of lightweight design and, sadly, constitute the majority, forever coupled with “something” satanic, “something” demonic– even The Ninth Gate, of all things, will be dragged in as an additional proof. [it’s, actually, an interesting question and I will develop it later]
Time to Say I’m Sorry
When I was young – I think it must have been 1979, the tenth anniversary of the tragedy? It would mean I was 15, quite the age to know better – I read a story about the murders in one of our newspapers, the only one, in fact, that I used to read, because the others were pure propaganda or unreadable reports from fields and factories, while that one was dedicated half to literature, half to the “problems” of society and was considered extremely liberal, you know, kinda bold, audacious, that shit. I don’t understand it now. I was old enough not to be deceived by our Soviet media; then again, in our family it was not considered comme il faut to believe any Soviet newspaper. I don’t know what happened to me at that time.
Anyway, they were writing about the murders, and it went, like: the wife of a notorious so-called “director”… who, after defecting the People’s Republic of Poland, hasn’t been able to make anything worth mentioning… is widely known for Satanism… black mass… during a wild orgy… drugs and group sex nonstop…
I swear it wasn’t that I believed. I rather didn’t care either way, it was the first time in my life that I heard those names (as you can guess, his movies were never shown in the Soviet Union), and, God forgive me, it was an interesting read that no report from a factory could match. I understand now that our propaganda worked, in fact, very well, - on subliminal level – even though that was the only time I succumbed to it, the example shows how it worked. I am very reluctant to mention it, but I need to explain myself this only time, I feel like I owe it to the dead. Well, the authors of the article said that there was a kitchen fork in her stomach. This image haunted me after that - a pregnant belly pierced by a fork – it was nauseating, and worked directly on my intestines, not brains. Since then I’ve always avoided – like plague – anything Tate/Polanski; no, no, no, I don’t want to have to do anything with those satanists, - black masses, forks and all.
What worked on the gut level was un-worked on the same level, but this time with some soul involved. It took me about 3 minutes of The Tenant (some time last March) to suddenly know it had all been lies; and then I started to watch movies and learn things. But how bad it was – that I, who’s always taken such a pride in never taking anything for granted, had swallowed it whole and let some important part of my soul stay empty or dead for all those years. Well, now this part is restored, and maybe now it was just the right time… but I’ll never forgive the Soviets anyway.
Well, I said that. Forgive me, Sharon, forgive the stupid bear, pray for us where you are.
Ask not what bears can do for you, but what you can do for bears. (razz)
When one is in agreement with bears one is always correct. (mae)
bears are back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh, this world... Tragedy on tragedy.Originally Posted by Jean
path, I am sorry for some awkward wording - it's the heat and the smoke, and the head isn't really in the best condition; I promise to do better next time
thank you Brice!
Ask not what bears can do for you, but what you can do for bears. (razz)
When one is in agreement with bears one is always correct. (mae)
bears are back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Not at all. I understood you. I'm just sickened by society.
And actually Jean I'm not sure it had anything to do with Russian propaganda specifically. I think it's really just the beast that the media is. It was initially represented in the same ways in LOTS of places Soviet or otherwise. I suspect Soviet propaganda and American propaganda are the same monster essentially. People have a sickness in their hearts. Anything beautiful or true must be destroyed.
I found your post not awkward at all, but eloquent.
Indeed.
Nitpicking is part of my nature, and I have made a habit on this site, not fully consciously, in making fun of people's typos, grammatical foilbles, and other minor mistakes. Harmlessly, I think... in good humor, I hope... but now I wonder if you've come to expect perfectionism from me even where it's inappropriate. I could tell that you took this seriously, Jean; your account is really touching, and I was trying to say that I understand your feelings. The Manson family was a bit before my time, but I've been very familiar with the details for quite some time now. Also, I'm definitely a fan of Polanski's films. And furthermore, I know a little about the former Soviet Union, and quite a lot about media hype. Believe it or not, we studied Pravda where I went to school -- Brice, I think that your summation is about half true and half false. Certainly, we all face barriers to clarity, but I still think that in this case particularly, Jean, you're entitled to a pass, and salute for your progress.
The problem is, that our propaganda was ideological, so it had some perverted meaning and worked on premises that can at least be analyzed and stand to reason - to some cruel, inhuman, marxist-leninist reason, but still (and thus, can be fought, doubted, and eventually overcome); while yours just seems to work on the principle of consolidating society against individuals; like the activist in The Tenant said, "It's simply a question of solidarity." - It kinda scares me because this way any idea can be popularized and made to grow deep roots in minds.And actually Jean I'm not sure it had anything to do with Russian propaganda specifically. I think it's really just the beast that the media is. It was initially represented in the same ways in LOTS of places Soviet or otherwise. I suspect Soviet propaganda and American propaganda are the same monster essentially. People have a sickness in their hearts. Anything beautiful or true must be destroyed.
Thank you Brice! I know it was over-sentimental, but bears are over-sentimental...I found your post not awkward at all, but eloquent.
Mike, there are few things in the world that bears love more than your nitpicking.
Back to the subject:
What bothers me, among other things, is people’s utter stupidity; I can’t help thinking that it’s stupidity that makes one heartless. Like, the death of a young pregnant woman isn’t a satisfactory tragedy; it becomes subject to wildest speculations, as if to make it more interesting; and then, the tradition of chewing on Rosemary’s Baby – Satanism – the murders is perpetuated and becomes a consecrated tradition even though, for fuck’s sake, there was no Satanism involved at any stage, as I tried to show in that long post and as anyone who keeps at least some vestiges of common sense could see for himself (people, sadly, have un-learned even how to watch movies, which I’ll try to show later on the example of The Pianist et al.). Ill-logic, fantasies and all kind of farfetchedness, anything goes, - and any kind of tone is allowed, because it’s not the dead (and living) we’re talking about now, but some cultural artefacts anyone can play around with to their heart’s content.
That chain of links from Dakota back to Dakota that I already quoted is, for example, preceded with a following comment: “The rumors and trivia associated with Rosemarys Baby are almost as much fun as the movie itself. My favorite is the “seven degrees of separation” connection.” (Review by The Horror Czar, Don Sumner 2006) I am all for a little fun, and it’s not because it is macabre that I object to that piece, but because it is mindless.
“Serious” researchers, however, don’t do any better; reading it is even rewarding, to an extent, inasmuch as it is a graphic study of how far idiocy can go if someone really perseveres.
“Many of the actors who played the witches were either Jewish or exhibited stereotypes commonly associated with the Jewish culture. For example, there’s an old stereotype that Jews have poor table manners. <…> Rosemary's Baby made overt references to blood libel, the sacrifice of Gentile babies by Jews.” [no comments from me]
“Several parallels exist between Rosemary's Baby, and the life and death of John Lennon, and the Tate-LaBianca-Hinman murders. Perhaps these parallels are merely coincidental, but a close analysis of the movie and of Lennon’s life reveals that dark forces—trusted people within Lennon’s inner circle—may have been at play, manipulating events in John and Yoko’s lives as part of a satanic ritual that ultimately ended with John’s slaying on December 8, 1980.” [the “several parallels” are, of course, pathetic – like Lennon being acquainted with Mia Farrow’s sister. The fourth “parallel” is that Sharon, too, was murdered. This is not funny any longer.]
“The brutal murder of Polanski’s wife, Sharon Tate, was not unlike the satanic worship portrayed a year earlier in Rosemary’s Baby.” [no, not unlike: both involved a pregnant woman, you motherfucker]
“Roman Polanski may have been inspired to make Rosemary’s Baby by Leary and Koesler. It is uncertain if Polanski and Koesler knew one another per se, but they were both friends with Leary. Like Polanski, Koestler was a Jew who seemed interested in exposing the darker side of his heritage.” [I have no idea whether it is correct of Koestler, but Polanski was, and remains, a cosmopolitan agnostic, emphatically disassociated from nation; I hope to treat the subject later.]
“Leary, Koestler, Lennon, and Polanski were apparently working together under Leary’s leadership; a force to be reckoned with. All four men were eventually destroyed or driven out of the country.” [I tried, for some time, practice imagining Polanski working under anyone’s leadership, and gave the exercise up as overstraining.]
Sorry, I forgot about a piece of proof the authors give, it’s Manchester, England from Hair.
Claude Hooper Bukowski
Finds that it's groovy
To hide in a movie
Pretends he's Fellini
And Antonioni
And also his countryman Roman Polanski
All rolled into one
One Claude Hooper Bukowski!
Now that I've dropped out,
Why is life dreary, dreary?
Answer my weary query,
Oh, Timothy Leary, dearie!
I wonder whether Fellini and Antonioni were involved in assassinating John Lennon (forgive me John, rest in peace).
Also, in a Russian medium: an article starts with more or less insightful anasysis of The Ghost Writer, and suddenly switches to the interesting part, like - by the way, do you know what? There are fascinating parallels existing between Manson and Polanski [oh give me a break…], for example, they were born on the same day, though different years (after which the author lets his imagination run away with him further beyond the boring borders of bland reality).
Manson was born November 12, motherfucker. The same nonsense, by the way can often be heard about John Lennon (October 9) and Mark David Chapman (May 10). As I said, anything goes, and confirming one’s fantasies with facts is no longer obligatory; the same goes for all media all over the world, amen.
Ask not what bears can do for you, but what you can do for bears. (razz)
When one is in agreement with bears one is always correct. (mae)
bears are back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
sure; I am going to try to go into the significant differences between the book and the movie when I get around to it
Ask not what bears can do for you, but what you can do for bears. (razz)
When one is in agreement with bears one is always correct. (mae)
bears are back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Please do! Especially because I see very little significant difference. In fact I've always felt Polanski's film was one of the truest films to it's original source that I've EVER seen. I've seen the movie and read the book many times as both are all time favorites of mine. IMO there are differences, but they seem subtle.
there are very little differences in the plot, the adaptation is universally considered to be [one of] the truest ever, but as far as the message, the - I don't know - spirit - is concerned, they seem very different to me (but these are, as you said, subtle differences)
By the time I finally get around to review R'sB, I think I have to have re-read the book... don't you, by any chance, have a copy (electronic) handy? though I think I maybe can find it, unlike Button Button, alas!
Ask not what bears can do for you, but what you can do for bears. (razz)
When one is in agreement with bears one is always correct. (mae)
bears are back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I agree there are differences in spirit or tone between the two.
Alas, I don't have a file. I just have my copies of the book itself.
Button Button was originally published in Playboy and later in a couple collections I believe. I may track down the original Playboy just to have it.
I take it you guys would recommend the book then? I might read it after The Exorcist.
Only the gentle are ever really strong.
I hate to admit that I never haveBut I definitely will now!
Only the gentle are ever really strong.
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZ9dpNe2NO8&feature=player_embedded"]YouTube- Roman Polanski Interview Part 1[/ame]
The answer is within
all matter is energy, all energy is GOD
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsNJ8YoRcmQ"]YouTube- Roman Polanski Interview Part 2[/ame]
thank you Linda love, that is one of the very few [relatively] sympathetic interviews; the "odd man out" label is remarkably apt, especially considering that he many times expressed love for the Carol Reed movie.
now -
HAPPIEST OF BIRTHDAYS TO MY FAVORITE MOVIE DIRECTOR OF ALL TIMES!
Ask not what bears can do for you, but what you can do for bears. (razz)
When one is in agreement with bears one is always correct. (mae)
bears are back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Heather
Ask not what bears can do for you, but what you can do for bears. (razz)
When one is in agreement with bears one is always correct. (mae)
bears are back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Will doHeather
I also have The Fearless Vampire Killers as well
Only the gentle are ever really strong.
Polanski is one of my new favorites. I got Rosemary's Baby and Chinatown in from Netflix a few months back and they captivated me. The Pianist and The Ghost Writer are both very finely crafted films also.
And i can't help but think that there is a great biopic to be made of Roman Polanski.
Big town's got its losers, small town's got its vices...
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