In celebration of his newest film Carnage, the TIFF Bell Lightbox rounds out their first full year of operation with a retrospective of films from controversial director Roman Polanski. His personal life aside, Polanski has made countless classic films and this series is a wonderful introduction to a true master filmmaker.
The series pays particular attention to the films Polanski was probably best known for; films that deal with outsiders thrust into extremely claustrophobic situations of psychological torment or class warfare. These films tie in quite nicely with Polanski’s latest film, since they exhibit both Polanski’s eye for tight spaces and what happens when social niceties run afoul of egos and tragic situations.
The series, titled Roman Polanski, kicks off on Saturday, December 17 at 9 p.m. with Polanski’s first feature, 1962’s Knife in the Water. A set up for the career that would follow, this minimalist portrait of mistrust and misunderstanding centres on a well to do couple that pick up a hitchhiker and bring him aboard their yacht for an overnight excursion. Even this early in his career, Polanski was a master of escalating tensions and suspense through simple use of dialog and close up camerawork that gives the audience no other part of the frame to avert their eyes away from the discomfort on screen.
Polanski would follow his Polish language debut with his first English language production Repulsion (screening Wednesday, December 21 at 9 p.m.), a much lauded and deeply unsettling psychological thriller starring Catherine Deneuve as a sexually repressed beautician who gives in to full blown hallucinations and crippling anxiety. Easily one of Polanski’s best and most shocking films, it might be the highest priority film for cinephiles unacquainted with his early work.
Following the excellent but offbeat crime genre exercise Cul de Sac (screening Sunday, December 18 at 9 p.m.) and a brief detour with the offbeat and unscreened horror comedy Fearless Vampire Killers, Polanski delivered not only his first smashing commercial success, but the second film in his Apartment trilogy after Repulsion. Rosemary’s Baby (screening Friday, December 23 at 9 p.m.) became one of the most critically acclaimed horror films of all time in which a young woman (Mia Farrow) becomes pregnant following a nightmarish dream and slowly begins to realize that her previously innocuous seeming apartment building and neighbours harbour deep devilish secrets.
Before returning to finish off the Apartment trilogy in 1976’s The Tenant (screening Thursday, December 22 at 9 p.m.), in which Polanski himself stars as a Polish ex-pat in Paris descending into madness and losing his identity, and after two lesser known projects (What? and a deeply personal mounting of Macbeth), Polanski made arguably his most famous work in 1974.
Chinatown has become not only one of the standards by which modern crime dramas are measured, but also a seminal cinematic experience. The story of private eye J.J. Gittes and an adultery case with roots in the heart of 1930s Los Angeles’ infrastructure will be screened twice. The movie will screen on its own on Tuesday, December 20 at 9 p.m., but if one has the chance to make it out to the Lightbox on a Sunday afternoon, film fans will be in for a real treat. Film writer for The Grid and CinemaScope Adam Nayman (who previously taught about on Polanski’s work as part of a series of classes he offered this past year at Toronto’s JCC) will be introducing and participating in a Q&A after the film on Sunday, December 18 at 3 p.m. One of the best film minds in Toronto, Nayman’s insights will prove to be enlightening and informative for anyone interested in the man behind one of cinema’s most beloved classics.
The series closes out by skipping ahead in Polanski’s filmography to 2010’s criminally underrated political thriller The Ghost Writer, before the debut and formal run of Carnage on December 30. Both find Polanski on familiar ground, but working with vastly different source material. The Ghost Writer updates mainstream writer Robert Harris’ tale of a young writer (Ewan McGregor) biting off more than he can chew when he takes on the assignment of writing the memoirs of a controversial former prime minister (Pierce Brosnan).
Carnage, on the other hand, is based on the Tony winning play God of Carnage from Yasmina Resa, but is almost more lowbrow in comparison to Ghost Writer, as Polanski takes on a comedy of errors set in a single apartment as four parents (Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly, Christoph Waltz, and Kate Winslet) try to get to the bottom of a schoolyard scuffle between their kids. It is a fitting closure to a program that seems to go full circle. It starts with a bunch of people literally out at sea and ends with people who have created islands unto themselves within a small enclosed space.
For tickets and information on Roman Polanski, visit tiff.net.
Top image: A scene from Carnage. Courtesy Mongrel Media.
