Rosemary's Baby (1968, dir. Roman Polanski)

Reflections from a Young Movie-goer

     After watching and loving Roman Polanski's 1965 psychological horror Repulsion, I was more than excited to see his more well known film Rosemary's Baby. Its a title frequently thrown around when the subject of “best horror” comes up, along with the likes of The Shining, The Exorcist and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, all three of which I thoroughly enjoyed. Horror is perhaps one of the most versatile (and definitely visceral) genres in cinema, as well as one of the most accessible. Its role is to play on the common-held fears of mankind. Therefore it is one of the most inclusive modes of storytelling. One could argue that there are many other types of film which do a similar thing, but, to me, horror is the most profound. Horror can be loud or quiet, terrifyingly abstract or dreadfully real, political or personal. It gives the film maker an excuse to explore their inner-most selves without seeming self-indulgent. The more we explore the dark and depraved world through the lens, the more we can see its depth and beauty in real life. Furthermore fear is active as an emotion, it doesn't need an enormous intellect to be understood but it can lead one into deep thought. Horror is also a response to every other genre. Take Ben Wheatley's Kill List, for instance, which starts out as a socially realistic domestic drama before taking a complete turn into horror. Rosemary's Baby does a similar thing but with much more nuance.

Its plot follows a young couple, Rosemary played by Mia Farrow and Guy played by John Cassavetes, who move into an old apartment in New York city. A friend of theirs, called Hutch, warns them against moving in to the apartment and tells them about its sordid history. Their neighbours include a nosy and eccentric elderly couple whom they unintentionally start socialising with. The elderly couple start involving themselves a lot in the young couple's lives, giving Rosemary a charm containing “Tannis root” and, on one night, a dessert to eat when they're planning on conceiving a child. After noting that the dessert has a strange undertaste, Rosemary passes out and dreams she is raped by a devil as all of her neighbours, standing naked, look on. From here on a number of complications start to arise. As the due date, June 28^th 1966 (hint hint hint) approaches, her health deteriorates and she falls into madness, learning that her neighbours are possibly witches who wish to take her baby for Satanic purposes.

The film works as a horror because it keeps the audience questioning Rosemary's speculations and her perspective; Is it going to be a psychological or a supernatural horror? I find films almost always scarier when the viewer is uncertain as to what they are actually scared of. This is something I've explored in other reflections (see Videodrome and Under the Skin reviews). Though I didn't find it nearly as scary or meaningful as Repulsion, which is far more visceral, raw and psychologically shocking as a horror film. The eeriness of Rosemary's Baby lies in its absurdism, the bizarre lurking beneath the every day. But, overall, it has far less effect today than the other's punchy realism. Its higher budget and bigger story roots it more in the 60s, and this makes many of the dramatic and comic aspects of the plot fail because of their datedness. Yet, with many of the narrative tropes of horror combined with the aesthetics of a drama, it has an impressive sophistication in its plot, drawing more on the eery rather than the scary. This is what gives it its nuance in comparison to something like Kill List, which channels one genre then the other.

There are many similarities in the progression between Repulsion to Rosemary's Baby and Jean Cocteau's two films The Blood of a Poet and Orphée. The director has explored similar themes, but their first is a lot more weird and visceral (almost more so for its age and lower budget), while the second has a bigger budget, a wider story and is more rooted in the canon of popular film. I think that both films for both directors are good in different ways, but in both instances I got more out of their first films.

But there were several parts to Rosemary's Baby I really enjoyed, which all stick out against the datedness of some of the other parts. The use of space and lighting in all the interior shots was incredibly atmospheric, adding more to the sense of eeriness than most of the characters. The visual motif of one room viewed from another. The sound of a ticking clock. All of these were utilised to similar effect in Repulsion, and are developed perfectly here. Polanski's approach to shooting interiors must have influenced Stanley Kubrick in The Shining in some way. Another performance I really liked was Guy's, which paralleled the uncanniness of the apartment through both his distance and his familiarity. The notion of the bizarre lurking underneath the everyday is most expressed through the apartment and Guy, drawing attention to the status of marriage and the home. Polanski is really exploring how these can turn against the woman, as well as questioning maternal duty. There is an interesting subtext to the film, which makes repeat viewings much desirable. At least Rosemary's Baby has this over Repulsion, which one can understand more completely the first time around.

Usually I'm not too keen on remakes, unless they are also reinventions. I was sad to hear that Nicolas Roeg's masterpiece Don't Look Now is being remade, which, if this were to happen, would lose a lot of its power. Yet, I feel as if I would welcome a remake of Rosemary's Baby, if put in the right hands. This is mainly because I felt the effectiveness of the plot against its datedness was jarring in places. As I have said before, some films attain a vintage quality with age where their oldness becomes charming. But in the case of this film, I think it tarnishes some of its desired effect. The most recent film I could think of which bears some resemblance is Lars Von Trier's Antichrist, which is definitely worth checking out for those interested in seeing something that explores similar themes of madness, marriage and maternal grief. Its also quite scary.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PewtQsgN5uo

Slow West (2015, dir. John Maclean)

Reflections from a Young Movie-goer

    I somehow managed to watch three other films in my break from writing on here; Man Bites Dog, Jean Luc Godard's Le Mepris and What We Do in the Shadows. For the first film I was only half-alert, but the other two I sat down and watched and enjoyed greatly. I won't do a full review on either of them now, but might reflect on them in future (I think Le Mepris might be one of the best films I've ever seen). I had Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby next on my schedule, but wasn't able to watch it last night. I did, however, watch something which I was just as interested in, Slow West.

I'm not overly-familiar with the Western genre, the extent of my watching includes The Searchers, No Country for Old Men, Django Unchained and bits of old Westerns on TV. Only one of these did I really enjoy; The Searchers. The latter two, while I appreciated them and really like some of their respective directors' other work, left me cold. I felt that the primary problem I had with both films was their actual attempts at the genre, despite my own inexperience with it (or perhaps because of my own experience with it). The only Tarantino films I've truly enjoyed were Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. I feel that his trademark is making style look like substance; if you don't enjoy the style, there won't be any substance. The three other Coen Brothers films I've seen: Fargo, The Big Lebowski and O Brother, Where Art Thou? have all been excellent. I think the main problem with No Country, which isn't really a problem with the film itself, was the fact that I'd previously read the book by Cormac McCarthy and preferred it a lot more. I'm not a believer in the “books are always better” argument and I think that film adaptations create something new altogether. But McCarthy's style complemented the plot a lot better than the Coen Brothers'. The Searchers feels a lot more daring and innovative as a western, compared to the other old westerns I'd seen bits of. It's dark and complex in its themes while epic and picturesque in length, and the modern viewer can revel in all its vintage western wonder. The other two films, though, tread similar ground in terms of morality, bringing not enough new to the screen.

Based on this trend, I didn't think I'd find much to like in Slow West, John Maclean's first full length feature starring Michael Fassbender and Kodi Smit-McPhee. The plot is simple and, as the title suggests, slow; Smit-McPhee plays a 16 year old Scottish boy who travels west across America in search of a girl he loves, who also emigrated from Scotland with her father. He runs into a bounty hunter, played by Fassbender, and pays him for protection. The bounty hunter soon discovers that the girl and her father are wanted and are being tracked by another gang of bounty hunters. It balances traditional western tropes with an offbeat, indie sensibility which fit together near-perfectly. This quirky sensibility allows it to approach the western tropes with a humour and a depth one would usually associate with European films. Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised.

Slow West feels like it innovates its genre. The diverse range of ethnicities we see; Congolese, Scottish, Swedish, Native American (not to mention the bounty hunter's mixed heritage) drifting across a dangerous and largely unconquered land makes it feel truly wild, exciting and primordial. Along with an interesting score, the locations (its actually shot in New Zealand) bring a fairy-tale beauty to the mix, adding to this whole sense of genre-revitalisation. This is the main difference between it and films such as Django Unchained, it only takes from the Western genre what it really needs to. When watching Django, I felt that Tarantino was trying to cram in everything he knew about Westerns, which made it seem more like a facsimile than anything. Slow West, on the other hand, is a lot more lean and refined. Lasting only 84 minutes, its slow but not sprawling, and the mastery of its story telling means it never seems gimicky or self-indulgent.

Ultimately, its a story about two universal elements; love and death, which it handles with all the mythicising absurdism of a western. But it has an exotic freshness and black humour which summon up many, many names before the likes of John Ford. But, above all, it engages the viewer on an emotional level, something which neither No Country for Old Men or Django Unchained did. Overall, it is this quality, with its fairy-tale simplicity, that makes all of the film's other innovations truly shine. I would like to see more films like Slow West in the future. Another film which I imagine to be just as innovative is A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, tagged as the first "Iranian Vampire Western", although I'm guessing it innovates in a completely different way. Despite my inexperience in the genre and my dislike of half the films I've seen from it, I would still say I have a lot of time for the Western.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFfsTsdJfF8

Videodrome (1983, dir. David Cronenberg)

     

    David Cronenberg's filmography is a mostly unexplored area for me. I've always meant to watch a lot of his films, especially his adaptations of Don DeLillo's 'Cosmopolis' and J. G. Ballard's 'Crash', books I rate very highly. The one film of his I have watched, however, is another adaptation of another book I really enjoyed reading; William Burroughs' 'Naked Lunch'. The themes and tonality of these three books shaped a lot of my own thinking and writing. I felt that if I was inspired by these novels as well then I would find a lot of interest in Cronenberg's work. His blurring of science fiction, horror and, to some extent, comedy, heavy on ideas as well as having a decent amount of body horror fascinated me. I'm surprised its taken me this long to actually get round to watching another. I chose 'Videodrome' for this list because, to me, it seemed to have the perfect balance of body and psychological horror, whilst placing its ideas at the forefront.

'Videodrome' follows the story of a CEO, played by James Woods, of a small television station that broadcasts softcore pornography and extremely violent programmes, he argues on a talk show near the beginning that the station relies on its sensational programming to stay afloat. He discovers a programme called “Videodrome”, apparently broadcast from Malaysia, that features victims getting brutally tortured and then mutilated. Interested, he attempts to track down the producers of “Videodrome”, only to be led down a psychedelic rabbit hole where “his” reality becomes indistinguishable from frequent, and often gruesome, televisual hallucinations. The film descends into a madness from which it never recovers. I fully expected there to be another twenty minutes on the third act, tying up all the loose and unexplained ends. That the film had the audacity to end so (arguably) openly, shows that there's a real vision behind the camera, giving the film a sort of raw anger which is entirely justified in its rationality. The blend of sci-fi and horror as well as its partial silliness remove any notion of pretension, leading one to expect a clear cut ending. And one can only really appreciate the power Cronenberg has over his own resolution.

 'Videodrome' came out in 1983, a time when a moral crisis in society arose out of the controversial “video nasty” and exploitation film genres. Cronenberg deals with this controversy head-on, crafting a film that is all ideas. It has all the catch-phrases and hypotheses of a philosophy, i.e. “Long live the new flesh” and “The television screen is the retina of the mind's eye”, and these make it endlessly fascinating and re-watchable. With similar “video nasties” lurking around the corners of the internet and a screen-reliant culture, the horror of 'Videodrome' feels as relevant today as it would have on its initial release. Furthermore it is a “horror” that fits my criteria of the genre as its all about human ideas, and ones that affect us all. The genius of the horror is the fourth-wall breaking, self-aware quality it has. The viewer is watching 'Videodrome' on a screen as James Woods watches a different but equally (if not a lot more) grotesque “Videodrome” on another screen. The difficulty he has in distinguishing reality from fantasy is an exaggerated metaphor for the difficulty those who want to censor exploitation films have in distinguishing the fantasy of the films from their own reality. Even though it was originally censored upon release, this is ideally what Cronenberg would have wanted.

It is through these psychological aspects that 'Videodrome' gets its body horror right. Gratuitous violence and gore are only truly justified in horror when they make a point, as they do in this film. Its as if Cronenberg has found a perfect equilibrium between not just psychological horror and body horror, but also style and substance. Watching it reminded me a lot of another visionary stylist; David Lynch. Both directors have their trademarks, both are similarly frequent in their output and both dance around the edges of horror. Cronenberg can be described as sci-fi, horror, comedy, but he is none of those things before his own unique style, and the same is true of Lynch. Yet, I feel as if I have much more reason to listen to Cronenberg because he is a lot less self indulgent than Lynch, who delights in being elusive. 'Videodrome' works with its own internal rationality, its as if Cronenberg wants his audience to understand it, as if he has a point to make. Whereas Lynch is a true surrealist and would never let his films be confined to rational arguments. Cronenberg feels grounded in literature about ideas, while Lynch is grounded in surrealist imagery. 'Videodrome' is far leaner and punchier than anything I've seen from Lynch. This isn't necessarily a bad thing on Lynch's behalf, but in the case of 'Videodrome' it feels totally like it gets straight to a point and doesn't waste the audience's time.

Sometimes this lean, raw energy can overshadow the mainstream credibility of the film, but I found these apparent flaws to really heighten its tone. Its rough around the edges, but all the more fun for it and shining when it gets to the really punchy images. Even the outdated, prosthetic effects have a sort of vintage charm which only contributes to the Cronenberg style. In an age of CGI, practical special effects and old school gore seem ever more like some sort of grotesque labour of love for the film maker. For all the appeal in the datedness of its style, 'Videodrome' still speaks volumes today and is completely pertinent in its substance. I look forward, in future, to watching every other film in Cronenberg's rich back-catalogue.

Reminded me of: Altered States, The Matrix, Jacob's Ladder

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6AXQeCE9Rw