Gaming World Forums
General Category => Entertainment and Media => Topic started by: Roman on July 16, 2008, 09:09:06 am
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Roman Polanski's Apartment Trilogy
(http://gamingw.net/pubaccess/23983/repulsion.jpg) (http://gamingw.net/pubaccess/23983/rosemarys-baby.jpg) (http://gamingw.net/pubaccess/23983/the-tenant.jpg)
The closest thing I've ever had to having my own apartment was the dorm room I lived in last year, but even though I was finally away from my parents, it hardly had all the perks that I imagine would come with living in my own place. Not only was the room tiny, but I had to share it with a kid who listened to Say Anything and went to bed at 11:30 every god damn night, preventing me from watching Adult Swim or playing video games or blasting Wu-Tang. On top of that, I had to share a bathroom with 40 other people, which I'm not going to go into, although I will mention that the last stall on the right, which I would use for pooping, was apparently rendered unusable about halfway through the year. (It wasn't fixed for the rest of the year, and I still have no idea what happened to it.) But, worst of all, I couldn't even smoke weed in my room without getting arrested. Fuck that! So, needless to say, I was pretty excited when my friends and I found an apartment to live in for the next year.
Unfortunately, director Roman Polanski (Chinatown, The Pianist) decided 40 years ago or so that living in apartments actually sucked ass, so he made a few movies that warned people that living in an apartment will turn you into a paranoid, psychotic mess. Also, a cross-dresser, but I guess that kinda goes hand in hand with the "psychotic mess" part.
Well, ok, that's really only in The Tenant, the third movie in the trilogy. Repulsion and Rosemary's Baby share many themes with The Tenant, but they each handle them differently. These three movies deal with the horrors of apartment living, and form a loose trilogy with many common elements. Here: let me tell you about them!
Repulsion (1965)
Hey guys, meet Carole:
(http://gamingw.net/pubaccess/23983/films-repulsion.jpg)
She's pretty cute, right? Look at how she lies on the floor and stares at the camera seductively, like she wishes you could come through the computer screen and join her on the wood-- or, uh, the floor. Wouldn't you like to just... absolutely ravish her? Well, too bad, because there's a reason this movie is called "Repulsion."
Carole is, I guess you could say, a bit spacey. She often finds herself staring into space, ignoring everyone around her as she gets lost in her wild imagination. She also seems to be extremely uncomfortable around men: early in the movie, a guy tries to set up a date with her; she tries to avoid it by saying that she's eating in with her sister that night. The guy then sets up the date for the next day, and Carole, never verbally accepting, rushes into her apartment. The next day, instead of going on the date, she sits on a bench and stares at a crack in the ground. Oh, did I mention that she's sexually repressed? Because that's important.
Carole lives in an apartment (!!!) with her sister Helene. Helene has a boyfriend named Micheal who, naturally, Carole hates. Whenever he stays the night, Carole is kept awake by the sounds of her sister's moaning. Yeah, they're bangin' in the next room, and apparently the walls are thin as paper. And when Carole throws Micheal's bathroom supplies away ("They don't belong in my cup," she says), Helene has the nerve to yell at her about it. What a bitch!
Anyway, Helene and Michael are going to Paris for a few days, leaving Carole alone. In an apartment. In Roman Polanski's apartment trilogy. Shit! Well, Carole's wild imagination starts to catch up to her, and they come to life in her apartment. I won't tell you everything that happens, but I will tell you that she gets molested by her hallway. Wait, what?
In Repulsion, the apartment acts as a reflection of Carole's state of mind. As the movie progresses, space appears more and more distorted, cracks in the walls grow larger, and her fucking hallway molests her. There's also an uncooked dead rabbit on the floor in one of the rooms (Carole and Helene were going to cook it for dinner one day, but Micheal showed up and Helene ate out with him instead) that, as I'm sure you would imagine, gets more and more disgusting every day.
One of the interesting things about this movie, and all of the movies in the trilogy, is that we're never really sure if what we think is happening is actually happening. If this one part was just a part of her imagination, how do we know whether or not this other part actually happened? The movie remains just ambiguous enough that you never really know for sure. If you've seen the movie, think about this: there's something in the last scene that you don't actually see, so it might not be exactly what you think it is. I've only actually seen the movie once so what I'm thinking of might not be as ambiguous as I think but still!
Rosemary's Baby (1968)[/b]
(http://gamingw.net/pubaccess/23983/rosemary2.jpg)
The second movie in the trilogy, Rosemary's Baby, is also the most well-known and, arguably, the best. I think I went a little overboard with the Repulsion section, so I'll try to keep this one shorter.
Rosemary's Baby is about newlyweds Rosemary (Mia Farrow) and Guy (John Cassavettes). Actually they might not be newlyweds, but the point is that they move into an apartment in New York and, try as they might, they can't seem to have a baby.
One creepy nightmare involving a demon hand later, Rosemary's pregnant! Hooray! Her neighbors Roman and Minnie start hanging around the apartment more often, helping Rosemary with chores and giving her baby advice. They recommend the best doctor in town for her, and they start mixing her special drinks to have instead of those nasty pills that other doctors would recommend. That's very nice, but uh, they're kind of old, and they hang around the apartment too much. It's kind of annoying! Guy assures Rosemary that they're just nice old people looking for some friends, and hey, guess what honey? The guy who got the part in the broadway play that I wanted just happened to go blind recently! Who would have thought!
Well, yeah, who would have thought? Are Roman and Minnie really just kind old people looking for some friends? How come whenever Rosemary and Guy visit their apartment, they take down all the pictures on the walls? And why the hell does Guy seem to like them so god damn much? Roman has some creepy fucking eyes. Rosemary's starting to get a little paranoid.
Eventually, the evidence starts piling up, and Rosemary's convinced that the baby in her belly is the child of satan. Yeah, the child of mother fucking satan. For some reason, Rosemary thinks this is a bad thing, but this is a movie, so I guess I can let that little detail fly.
That's the basic plot of Rosemary's Baby. So why is it a part of the Apartment Trilogy? The apartment plays another important role in this movie, although it might be a little less obvious than in Replusion or The Tenant. This time, the apartment seems to be a safe house or a place of comfort, but, dun dun dun, it's more than what it seems. The apartment kind of starts off as this new beginning for Guy and Rosemary; this representation of a new life they're going to lead. But it's not so much Rosemary's apartment that's a problem, but rather her neighbor's, Roman and Minnie, that creates the tension. On some nights, Rosemary swears that she hears some odd chanting going on in their apartment. And, as I mentioned earlier, Roman and Minnie take down the paitnings on the wall when Rosemary and Guy visit. And, of course, there's the totally awesome ending, which I won't reveal here, but I will reveal that it's pretty awesome.
As with Repulsion, Rosemary's Baby never makes it explicitly clear whether or not what you think is going on is actually going on, until the ending, when you realize it was all just a dream. Yep! Just a dream. Or maybe I'm lying. MAYBE YOU SHOULD WATCH THE MOVIE AND FIND OUT FOR YOURSELF.
The Tenant (1976)[/b]
(http://gamingw.net/pubaccess/23983/lalocataire.jpg)
I actually saw The Tenant only a few days ago, so I'm not really sure what to make of it. Before I go into the plot details and all that shit, I want to say that I thought it was ok, but it might require multiple viewings to fully appreciate, so I'll watch it again sometime soon and let you all know what I think afterward.
The Tenant is about this polish dude named Trelkovsky (played by Roman Polanski himself) who moves into an apartment in Paris after the previous owner commits suicide. He also starts to hook up with the previous owner's best friend. To say the least, weird things start happening! The weird thing about this apartment is that it doesn't come with it's own bathroom; Trelkovsky has to walk down the hall to use the communal bathroom. He can actually see into the bathroom from his bedroom window. Every few nights, though, he sees people standing completely still in the bathroom for hours at a time just. staring. at. him. One of his friends suggests that maybe they're jerking it, the other wisely responds with "Can you stand completely still while masturbating?" (I'm paraphrasing here, but that's basically what he said).
By the way, this is an aspect that I really like about this movie. There's something about people STARING at you from a distance that I find incredibly fucking creepy, and this is a scare tactic that you don't see in a lot of movies! I guess a lot of horror movies are like HAHA HERE IS A MONSTER AND A LOUD NOISE, but this one's just like HEY, THIS MOTHER FUCKER'S STARING AT YOU. AND YOU CAN'T REACH HIM. AND THERE'S NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT. And I like that.
So yeah, shit happens, and eventually Trelkovsky starts going insane, and he becmes convinced that his neighbors are trying to turn him into Simone Choule, the previous tenant who killed herself. This is where the movie kind of fell apart for me; the part where he starts going insane seemed a little too abrupt (unlike Repulsion, where the insanity more gradually developed), so I had a little trouble buying it. Granted, there is a scene where Trelkovsky asks, "When does a person cease to be who he thinks he is?" so I think the abruptness was kind of on purpose. I don't know, I'm going to have to watch it again. There's definitely more to the movie than what I got the first time around, so I'm going to give it the benefit of the doubt. And you should too! Check it out; I think I'm actually making it sound worse than it actually is
As I mentioned way earlier in the article, living in the apartment turns Trelkovsky into a paranoid, psychotic mess. People are staring at him from the bathroom window. There's a hole in the glass where the previous tenant killed herself. Shit, half of the stuff in the apartment belonged to the previous tenant, who, by the way, killed herself. Also, half of Trelkovsky's neighbors blame him for making noise that he hasn't been making. What... what is going on!!!
I guess it's pretty obvious by now, but this movie, along with the other movies in the trilogy, doesn't explicitly state whether or not Trelkovsky's paranoia is justified until the end, when it turns out that he's actually caught in a cycle of death and rebirth by some egyptian curse or something. Or not. Find out for yourself.
Coming soon: I'm probably going to elaborate more on the common elements of the three movies, but it's like five in the morning right now so I'll just edit it in later I guess. CHANCES ARE you guys are going to barely read the topic as it is so we'll see!
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That was an interesting rea. By the sounds of it, these Polanski films remind me of the surrealist stuff from the early thirties done by Bunuel like Chien Andalou, or maybe even the later The Discrete Charm of the Bourgeoisis. The idea of the dream state as portrayed in film is something that usually draws attention, because of the conventions of cinema you expect a solid line of continuity, but that can also be so easily confused by the filmmaker.
As far as Polanski films go, I've only seen Pianist and Frantic, but Repulsion sounds like the kind of film I would enjoy.
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Of the three I've only seen Rosemary's baby, but I agree with the ideas that you brought up. Is the whole apartment thing a recognised connection between the movies or is it something you picked up on your own?
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i've heard of rosemary's baby and basically know the story but now i really want to see repulsion and the tenant, which i hadn't even heard of previously.
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Of the three I've only seen Rosemary's baby, but I agree with the ideas that you brought up. Is the whole apartment thing a recognised connection between the movies or is it something you picked up on your own?
In the trivia section for each movie on IMDb, it mentions how the three movies form a "loose trilogy", but that's all they say. I noticed a bunch of other connections which I haven't really touched up on yet but I'll edit the original post later.
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This thread is good dude. Good threads get ignored too much on here.
I really needed some education on Polanski and this thread has kick started me a bit more. I've put Chinatown and Rosemary's Baby on my list to grab - if I dig them I'll check out the others in this thread.
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This thread is good dude. Good threads get ignored too much on here.
I really needed some education on Polanski and this thread has kick started me a bit more. I've put Chinatown and Rosemary's Baby on my list to grab - if I dig them I'll check out the others in this thread.
Get Chinatown, I just watched it recently and it is pretty fantastic. On ANOTHER NOTE I think my favourite Polanski film is The Ninth Gate if you can get past the halfway point where the film suddenly turns from this amazing cultural book hunt into a story about witches and opening the gates of hell. I don't want to ruin it for you but there is a point where it turns from a grounded movie with a cool plot to ACTUALLY RIDICULOUS LAUGH OUT LOUD. Either way I still think the rest of the film trumps those few moments of FLYING WITCHES.
Also The Pianist is pretty good if you are into that kind of thing.
On NO CIRCUMSTANCES EVER should you watch MacBeth though.
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I've heard that MacBeth is pretty good! FUCK YOU BUDDY I'm gonna watch it anyway......
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I watched Repulsion a little earlier, it was good. As far as the dead guy in the bath goes, I didn't look beneath the surface on that one (heh heh heh). I'd say she killed him, because I can't think of what else it would be in the bathtub that would get such a reaction from the others. Apart from the obviously insane stuff, I think most of it happened. Maybe a few things here and there which the men said to her she made up because she was crazy. What a crazy virgin, huh?!
This film comes from a time I'm pretty fond of with french movies - I know it's not french, but it's got Catherine Deneuve in it etc - the way the ladies look, the music and the quality of the picture and just how weird every film I've seen from around this time and place is. So if you know anymore kind of like this or whatever, tell me. I might have seen em! but tell me anyway.
I'm going to get the other two now. I'm interested in this people staring from far away thing you mentioned in The Tenant, I want to see how that is. Repulsion was pretty scary at parts, though. More towards the begining before her fears started to get more and more sexual because I can't relate to that as much as seeing people in mirrors etc. When that guy came in from the door behind the cupboard, though! Shit!
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I've never seen these, but I've heard good things about Rosemary's Baby. These movies sound like they're right up my alley, and I will check them out soon!
Seems like after special effects technology allowed for dumbass movies like The Ring or Hostel with uber gore and CG ghosts, horror/suspense movies took a bad turn. Where movies once had freaky psychological aspects, now their plots are reduced to "Eerie ambient sound while character rounds another corner, and BOOM! badass CG monster puking baby fetuses!!" There's just no skill in writing a horror movie like that, and movies today are more about trumping one another in the surprise factor and having the hottest actress being mutilated in the most fucked up way.
A suspense/chiller kind of movie I really enjoyed was "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" (these Polanski movies sound like the same style). The writing is just excellent, with situations and creepiness escalating in a very believable way. And like these movies, the "monster" isn't a pissed off alien mutant lumberjack, but rather an old lady with some deep-seated psychological issues. Her feelings of envy really start to come to life through her actions.
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A suspense/chiller kind of movie I really enjoyed was "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" (these Polanski movies sound like the same style).
No, not at all. I decided to rent Whatever Happened to Baby Jane because of this comment and I'm in the middle of it and uuggggghhh I can't take this shit man, but like I can't pinpoint what exactly about it I don't like. I think I was just expecting something entirely different than what it is, I don't know. This movie is so boring and I swear to god I never complain about movies being BORING.
Like, Repulsion is a very slow movie but WHBJ is still boring by comparison fuck.
Edit: Ok so I finished the movie. FOR A SECOND THERE I thought the movie was going to have a really awesome ending where Jane BURIES HER SISTER ALIVE but then the camera zooms out or something and you see Blanche on the left and fuck that. My mom told me that it had an UNEXPECTED TWIST ENDING and I thought that was going to be it BUT NO turns out Blanche crippled herself fuck that.
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im watching rosemary's baby...RIGHT NOW.
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I want to make a movie where someone buries a paralyzed person in the sand at the beach, that would be awesome.
Man WEHBJ had a dumb ending, NO, I CRIPPLED MYSELF, fuck that.
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i had to go to a horrible indian thing! back to rosemary's babby.
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does this baby jane movie have a scene on the beach with strawberry ice cream or something?
i may have seen a minute of this movie and it's very important that i know this
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According to Hollywood Reporter[7] a 2009-2010 remake of Rosemary's Baby will begin production. The intended producers are Michael Bay, Andrew Form and Brad Fuller. Some names associated to the reimagining include Jessica Alba, Lindsay Lohan, Ginnifer Goodwin and Blake Lively.
WELP.
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I want to say something but I don't know what to say.
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thank goodness because when rosemary's baby finished i said (out loud) to myself "haha, imagine what would happen if they remade this film now with utter pieces of shit filling every job on the movie? it would be completely unnecessary, infinitely worse and devoid of integrity from the get go! but i am not lucky enough to live in a time when such good things happen..." and then i read this news, done a little skip step and reminded myself how much my miniscule efforts towards being an individual really matter in the big picture and smiled a blissfully vacant smile. it's a good life, fellows.
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According to Hollywood Reporter[7] a 2009-2010 remake of Rosemary's Baby will begin production. The intended producers are Michael Bay, Andrew Form and Brad Fuller. Some names associated to the reimagining include Jessica Alba, Lindsay Lohan, Ginnifer Goodwin and Blake Lively.
WELP.
hahahaha no way man you made this up
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i always fall for these. it seems so obvious now.
edit:
uhhh http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1201159/
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dear god i do not think you could have made up a more comical set of people to remake this movie
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wait maybe he did!!! maybe he did.....
just keep sayin it until its real panda..
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Idiot Kid: alright so basically you want me to just add one fake news bit to IMDB ?
Steel: Yeah, yeah. You're good with computers. You are...one...main...man
Idiot Kid: oh haha I dont know about that but all this effort for a joke post man its a little much plus you gonna edit wikipedia and they've got hella nerds running around saying "THIS IS VANDALISM YOU."
Steel: You just do what you gotta do and the new hd tv fairy might visit you.
Idiot Kid: you're good people !
Steel: Brb getting hosed on Cuervo
Steel: 3=^()
Idiot Kid: WHAT THE HELL
Steel: I call it the Ron Perlman Smilie
Idiot Kid: A SMILIE THAT BASICALLY HAS ELEPHANTITIS
Idiot Kid: FUCK YOU MAN
~Idiot Kid has logged off.
Steel: Dude?
~Idiot Kid is no longer online.
Steel:3=^ (
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i didn't even know you could edit imdb. i didn't know it worked like that.
i was duped twice.
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ultimate jone
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the joke is that steel's version of a hacker is some kid in new mexico who plays washbucket bass in his dad's folk group, not that idiot kid changed imdb.
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also why did they take the paintings down, and why did rosemary look at one of the paintings and quote her dream (you're lifting her too high) and why did that first girl die?
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also why did they take the paintings down, and why did rosemary look at one of the paintings and quote her dream (you're lifting her too high) and why did that first girl die?
They took the paintings down so Rosemary wouldn't know that they were part of a satanic cult durr, and the first girl killed herself because Roman and Minnie were trying to do the same thing to her that they eventually did to Rosemary, if I recall correctly.
As for the quote I can't remember that part but next time I watch it I'll get back to you with my... words of wisdom
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they were just eccentric pictures though, not of SATAN. also I thought the devil chose rosemary out of all the women in the world...
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does this baby jane movie have a scene on the beach with strawberry ice cream or something?
i may have seen a minute of this movie and it's very important that i know this
also yes, and it was in black and white if that helps
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they were just eccentric pictures though, not of SATAN. also I thought the devil chose rosemary out of all the women in the world...
Wasn't one of the paintings a house on fire or something? That doesn't exactly match with their KINDLY OLD NEIGHBOR persona, nom sayin. Also it's possible that the devil chose the other girl first but she killed herself so he chose Rosemary next. Remember how she had the stinky necklace thing, and then later Minnie gives one to Rosemary? At least I'm pretty sure that happens. That happens right? It's been a while but I'm pretty sure that happens.
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imma give YOU a stinky necklace of dick juice.