Bitter Moon
People's evaluation of the erotic film "Bitter Moon" is polarized. Affected by Polanski's sexual assault case, some people believe that the film shows Polanski's adulterous tendencies and inner perverted desires.
That's right.
Bitter Moon portrays Oscar as a masochist, masochistic character with strange fetishes who becomes addicted to his wife, Mimi. The relationship between the two went through a four-stage process of love, separation, sadomasochism, and elimination, during which Oscar changed from an abuser to an abuser, completing three psychological transformations.
This extreme presentation of violence and eroticism thoroughly reveals the universal psychology of love between men and women, and tells how marriage falls apart.
From that point of view, I think this is one of Polanski's most in-depth films.
The Ninth Gate
The narrative style of "The Ninth Gate" is somewhat similar to that of "Bitter Moon", just as grotesque, and "The Ninth Gate" is more evil.
The film is mixed with Western religious elements such as black magic, curses, and demons, and the protagonist's journey to find the ancient book "The Ninth Gate" is also his own path of depravity. The story of the film is not twisted and turned, and Polanski has always used a gentle approach to narrating deep human nature. The off-screen audience steps into the devil's swamp as the protagonist steps into the protagonist' swamp, and the protagonist's psychological changes are thrilling and natural, until the last moment, the audience realizes that this is the trap of the devil.
Unfortunately, the second half of the film is rather hollow. "Rosemary's Baby" is ingenious, as a film of the same type, "The Ninth Door" is like a random pile of religious elements, and the sense of suspense and horror is not in place.
The Pianist
"Go, don't run."
The "law of survival" that his father personally told Polanski was used in the movie "The Pianist", which became a true portrayal of the cruelty of World War II.
"The Pianist" made Polanski famous all over the world, winning the Academy Award for Best Director.
It adopts a semi-documentary narrative approach, telling the story of the survival of a Polish Jewish pianist who was displaced during the war.
The tone of the whole story is oppressive and bleak. Everything is cruel, but there is no lack of light, soft human feelings.
We can glimpse Polanski's inner pursuit of sublime art: every time a pianist touches the keys, the hope of life is ignited, and music becomes the pillar of the pianist's survival.
The film rarely integrates "art" and "war", the whole film is calm and restrained, watching the sudden death of life, the strange twisted human body and the streets of Xiao Suo from the perspective of the protagonist, human nature is twisted and deformed step by step in such an environment, dignity slowly disappears, loneliness crawls through the heart, and "existential" fear devours the soul.
Spiritual faith, mercy, and tenderness seem particularly precious and absurd in such a world, like a fleeting dawn.
All emotions were held in the heart until the whole of Warsaw became a ruin, and pianists played piano music on the ruins.
Orphans of the Mist
Orphans of the Mist is a bit like Tess, and I think it can be seen as a shadow of Polanski's own childhood.
The composition and colors are still like classical oil paintings, the tones are not dark, and the sun can be seen from time to time. Probably out of selfishness, Polanski weakened the original darkness of Orphans of the Mist, focusing on the parts of blessing and hope.
The rhythm of the story is relaxed and the characters are distinct, which is a perfect reproduction of Dickens's original work.
The Killing
"Killing" is an interesting satire.
There is no real "killing" plot in the whole story, only a quarrel between four parents over their children fighting.
The scene is simpler than "Water Knife", just a small apartment room, but the content includes family education, husband and wife feelings, male and female relations, outlook on life, through "quarrel" to express, buckle rigorous, wonderful.
The four men faded their disguises during the quarrel, and gradually became hysterical and revealed their nature. The audience laughed again and again, and finally found that no one could escape this "killing"—the encirclement and suppression of modern civilization in the dark human nature, which can also be understood as the dark human nature finally "killed" the external disguise.
The small space and the game of a few people have always been Polanski's best play, and the story scheduling and rhythm control of "Killing" are very cool. Polanski also uses the corridor connecting the apartment and the elevator room as a great tool to lift the audience's appetite and create suspense: every time the protagonist walks to the entrance, we can't help but feel nervous.
Venus in Fur
Venus in Fur is refreshing.
The film has fewer actors than Knife in the Water, only two, and the scene is set in a closed theater.
The structure of the play within a play, the confrontation between a man and a woman, the psychological entanglement, the alternating transformation of identity, Zhuang Zhou Mengdi, Butterfly Mengzhuang Zhou.
Director Thomas hates the actress's self-sufficiency and arrogance, reluctantly agrees to the audition but gradually falls into his own drama "Venus in Fur", the fantasy of sadistic interaction and gender transformation is full of burning lust, and the restrained performance method achieves the highest level of eroticism.
Its charm is quite similar to "Bitter Moon": who is the master in the relationship between men and women? The swapping of masochistic and abusive roles implies a change of power, which is often used to express the tension of sexual relations, followed by deeper philosophical ideas. Polanski dissects the psychology of the male protagonist layer by layer, and finally the male protagonist realizes the transformation of the surface and the inside, the inside and the outside, exposing his most primitive desires, and the war between male and female rights reaches a climax at the moment when the actress is wrapped in fur and dancing the Dionysian dance.
"I Accuse"
"My Complaint" tells the story of the beginning of the wave of anti-Semitism in France at the end of the 19th century, the "Dreyfus Affair".
Polanski chose an alternative perspective and recounted the entire event in his usual calm and restrained style. The film does not excessively condemn persecution and injustice, but thinks about the deep reasons behind persecution and injustice, and analyzes this matter in detail and makes people think deeply through the exploration of the origin and process of the event.
Polanski uses the details in the film and the every move of each character to express the "evil" of each person, that is, the seemingly superficial and mediocre "evil" of carrying out orders without thinking. No one paid any attention to the forged evidence, the missing manuscripts, and these "evils" that had no mind or even obvious malice eventually converged into a huge force that pushed the wheel of history.
Polanski's inner purity and persistence can be seen, and "seeking truth" is the only purpose of his film art.