AND LAST OF ALL, THE HUMAN MIND : "KNIFE IN THE WATER"

You will have noticed I have a bit of a soft spot for Roman Polanski. As a director I mean. He is one of the most successful directors I know in portraying human psychology. Well, the common wisdom goes that there is nothing as queer as folk, and this is undoubtedly true. In fact, why venture into fantasy lands (don’t get me wrong I am absolutely hooked on fantasy as a genre) when some of the most unbelievable things are going on right inside our own heads? This first film by Polanski returns to a theme he takes up in Carnage (reviewed a couple of weeks back), his latest film. Power struggles. Andrzrej and Kristina are a couple. He is a sports reporter, a rather vain man who needs to be right at absolutely everything. She is his pretty young wife. They are headed out for a day’s sailing on their boat one Sunday morning when they run into (almost literally) a hitchhiker. One thing leads to another and although Andrzej is clearly rather annoyed with the young man, they decide to take him along, not only in the car, but also in the boat, to sail. With the three people crammed in this rather limited space a power struggle begins between the two men. At first it is purely psychological but more and more it begins to border on the physical. The young hitchhiker is seemingly obsessed with his knife but the older man has some tricks up his sleeve too. How will the struggle end? Who will get the upper hand and more to the point, what will become of the looser? I have small criticism of the DVD I watched. It is the school copy so there is really very little I could do about the choice but still. The subtitles. There were holes. Many holes. Which is a problem if you don’t speak Polish. Which I don’t. However the good thing is that, from what I was able to grasp, the bits missing weren’t exactly the vital bits. And you could, from the context, guess what’s going on. I mean, it didn’t affect my grasp of the story but you know what I mean. As to the story, it is another exercise in suspense and subtlety by Polanski. At first you might find the film a bit boring. Mundane. No big action, not much dramatic dialogue. But if you continue watching it, you see the tension building between the two men. You slowly become involved. Without realising how, you’re taking sides, getting annoyed with one character or the other. And then of course, the film’s climax. Again, Polanski is a master of surprise endings and he seems to have started off as he meant to continue, if you feel a bit confused and mind blown at the end of it, trust me, the characters feel much worse. Plus, add to all this, the fact that the film has a total cast of three. Shot mostly on an actual boat. That is a whole barrage of technical difficulties if there ever was one and yet out of it emerges an Oscar ®nominated masterpiece. I know, it is an acquired taste. But do give it a whirl. Or a paddle.