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| From http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_ACG6lH-LdJA/TIvbfe-1MlI/ AAAAAAAAAsA/1s5lkZhOXnE/s1600/repulsion1.jpg |
Dir. Roman Polanski
A partial thread for the season
has been as much about the position of a director in making a film. I am
someone who follows the auteur theory, that a director creates a film through
their desires for what it will be, but along with the fact that 1) some films
I've seen have been made with their director clearly asleep on their
directorial chair, and 2) that all the members of a film production crew have
an effect on the final work, I add a modification of my own. That like a the
captain of a ship, they have the final decision, the control, but everything
that can affect the ship internally and externally can have a lasting effect of
as much. It also means for me, even a greatly compromised or job-for-hire film
production can still be connected to an auteur's traits because they represent instead
them as people and their interactions with people like producers, adding layers
to their creative web usually ignored or dismissed as going against such
theories. This is a pertinent question here, for this season, not for a cerebral
reason, but for a simply concern as a hobby - what films and their directors
are more than ones I find to be good and view as my best, particularly when one
always worries about wasting time on something merely average instead of
something that's great. .jpg) |
| From http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9L8ziXhRbXc/UM9u4Ka7uhI/ AAAAAAAAAOY/oaVDwdfe7yU/s1600/repulsion1.jpg |
This is skewered further because,
when I develop an admiration for a director, in most cases I have a quirk where
the least appreciated or obscurer films are the ones I gravitate to, to the
point in some cases I find the most acclaimed and well known films for a
director's filmography are the least interesting, even though I may see them as
great films still. Barely seeing any of Roman
Polanski's filmography, I'm in a position here rewatching this film where Repulsion is one of his most well known
and acclaimed films, which could lead to a very different attitude to the film
after viewing it. It's certainly a film with a strong artistically minded
director behind it, but what did I think of the film by itself?* A young woman
Carol (Catherine Deneuve) is living
in late Sixties London, and it's apparent that something psychologically is
wrong with her. There is a literal repulsion, a disgust in her for men that is
worsening alongside a complete disconnect and hallucinations, becoming harmful
for her state of mind. When her older sister Helen (Yvonne Furneaux) and her boyfriend Michael (Ian Hendry) go on holiday, leaving her along in their shared apartment,
Carol's paranoia and fracture is released fully, leading to horrible results.
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| From http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_ACG6lH-LdJA/TIvbrI654yI /AAAAAAAAAsQ/ROxAfefD-Ls/s1600/repulsion3.jpg |
For the first half of the film,
there is an odd sensation of watching a late sixties British film, which is a psychological horror movie, that is very much
a British New Wave film like Saturday
Night and Sunday Morning (1960), a documentary influence and emphasis on
characters like such films apparent here too. It's odd only in that the film is
mostly known for its most delirious scenes, when the actual tone for the film
has a drastic change on the content for two reasons. One, how this feels
significant different from other Polanski
films I've seen in tone but not in his obsessions, which shows the flexible plasticity
of a director throughout their career, the other because Repulsion is not a full
blown horror, but a significantly different film between the two genres that
has an effect on the material. The emphasis on drama, and a very realistic
tone, makes the horror when it reveals itself to be more abrupt and more alien
from reality, an added unreality to the mental breakdown that happens to Carol.
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| From http://www.best-horror-movies.com/image-files/ repulsion-coming-out-of-the-wall.jpg |
From here, the film dives into
completely nightmarish territory while still having a foot in its realism. The
apparent incongruous meeting of the realistic drama against hands coming out of
the wall is vast yet a perfect melding here, ripe with tension as the trauma
Carol has becomes more apparent. The sexual nature of the repulsion and most of
the hallucinations is obvious, the terrors Carol experiences of a man
materialising out of thin air in her bed and raping her like an incubus
potentially suggesting this is a trauma of a sexual assault victim if depicted
in a tone of a nightmare, if not that then at least a trauma heightened by how
men, even the sympathetic potential love interest, leer at her or view her as
someone to be protected. It never feels like a crass psychological study but
something much more disturbing in how fearful she is of her environments, or
cut-off from it, as much seeing it through her mind as from the outside at her.
As she disconnects from the outside world, a testament to Deneuve in suggesting so much in her acting through little, the transition
to her being completely isolated in the apartment, claustrophobic and decaying
with a rotting skinned rabbit and disarrayed furniture, turns the film as far
as possible to the abstract. Deneuve's performance, while with a solid cast
with her, was absolutely vital to get right, and the porcelain beauty she has
in the character, the quietness, the (frankly) virginal side to her against a
clear, explicit sexuality creates a character
that is a completely three dimensional female protagonist anyone can put
themselves into. More so as the trauma she feels becomes so obviously horror
based and actual death is involved. The drama is kept of as much importance to
add to it, still sewn into the horror, the down-to-earth tone adding to the
heightened, unsettling content. In how quiet and casual the film is, only for
moments to break the reality, and how reality goes against the unreality
completely. A blatant, startling crack in the wall that appears in front of
Carol, abruptly taking place, may be the best scene in the film for me at this
point, a mere jump scare compared to other moments, a minor second of film,
because of how this juxtaposition suddenly comes to be and how the film returns
back to normalcy, adding to the skewered dread of what is happening to the
protagonist. The film succeeds in creating a logic, real character profile but
willing to go and create images that, in a bad tone, would be comical but here
are disturbing.
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| From http://michaelklingerpapers.uwe.ac.uk/projectimages/repulsion/8.jpg |
Abstract Rating
(High/Medium/Low/None): Medium
The nature of the horror against
its drama, with consideration, adds to a greater effect on the material, which
by itself is already unsettling and unconventional in use and effect. By the
end, it is subjective what is real for Carol and not baring a few things, the
worst things to have taken place for her, adding to the darkness of the film.
She becomes more sympathetic for it, by the end, as everything we see is
through the perception of her being confused and disturbed by everything around
her. From mysterious, threatening phone calls to a meeting by the landlord, the
film escalates in its tone, mixing the realistic and the completely fantastical
with full balanced between the two.
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| From http://33.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m7ioxdCYIe1qdx4k4o1_500.gif |
A Cinema of the Abstract film?
Repulsion does feel like it was created with immense consideration
from Polanski, the question that is
next being how the other films I'll see of his, for the first time, will match
against this one. If I become a fan of the films of Polanski's will Repulsion
be one I hold up as one of the best? Right now, I find it to have been a great
viewing experience, able to appreciate it more than I ever did before.
Certainly a film for this blog, one which is far more appropriate for it than I
originally thought, about to give it a Low rating until I actually stepped back
and considered how the subtlety masked how explicitly dark and unsettled the
film really is. It's a film, in hindsight, that is now crawling under my skin,
not through the viewing, but thinking of everything that transpires within it.
*(In this case, I do have to
mention the obvious controversy with Roman
Polanski, because of the mid seventies rape charge, which was at the back
of my mind even if it has nothing to do with the film watching it and purposely
pushing the thought back at one point, not connected to anything on screen, but
the unfortunate fact that it'll come to mind just thinking of Polanski himself. Aside from this, I can
separate the man from his work, though he liked to bring in his own life into
the tone of his work which will bring up some serious questions about some of
his films when I get to them. He is an immensely complicated individual in his
history, not to trivialise the issue in question, but we also forget how many controversial
and sordid aspects of artists we tend to hide under the metaphorical carpet,
not realising the human beings have sides to them which are immensely difficult
to think about even if they've done good things not just in art.)
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