33.
LOLITA, dir. STANLEY KUBRICK, 1962
to be watched, to be under watch, under surveillance, under the imposed and self-constructed morality of others, what does this do to a person? to selfhood?
the tenant for me was layered in questions. first, the question of human-ness, of the maintenance of sanity, of the lines that separate me from you and how easily they are blurred and lost. beneath that, the sense that sanity, and nearly, the soul, is easily eroded or comporomised when one does not feel safe, when information is passed too freely in the name of some moral code, resulting in power for some and near terror for others.
it was so funny.
and so terrifying.
i found myself laughing solidly for 5 minutes, and then suddenly feeling nauseous with strange fear.
i think if i had not already known of polanski's relationship to the holocaust, of being a child of survivors and i think a survivor himself, i would have felt that this film, with deep roots in what it is to be an outsider, to feel watched, lied about, out of control, came from someone who understood the power of whispers that become petitions that become plans. it was not an accident that the first woman we see booted from the apartment had a disabled child: physically weak, she made visible the weakness that comes from being prey. or, she is prey because of her weakness.
and all of this rolled into a murder mystery, which for me was a great backdrop, but i guess not where i ultimately found focus. i'm interested in who simone choule is to the film (real or imagined), and how she fits into what the film was about to me (which maybe is or is not what it was about to juliet!), but i haven't quite gotten that far in thinking about it yet. will make an addendum to this post once i carve out some more quiet-pondering-the-tenant time. i thought about the film periodically since i saw it, and solidly this morning while walking our dog. still haven't fully gotten where i want to be in my thinking of it, but had to post a new film nonetheless.
lolita was on tv the other day and i watched about 30 seconds before turning it off. i've never seen it and have wanted to watch it fully ever since.
ADDENDUM, 9 JULY 2009: my initial reaction to THE TENANT was to place it in line with the other polanski films i have seen from around the same period--
repulsion, chinatown, rosemary's baby. polanski was fascinated by the descent into madness. i am tempted to draw a clear line between the work and the real madness of his own life, but ultimately this seems too tidy a conclusion. i wonder what he has said on the subject?
(juliet)
