Review: "Knife in the Water" - 5/13/10

"Come on Bishop, do the thing with the knife!"

You know what? Roman Polanski has had his fair share of a life. I think we can all agree with that. But I guess even great directors can’t really escape their personal lives. Especially when one’s extracurricular activities involves underage girls, Quualude and sodomy, am I right? All pedophilia jokes aside, this guy has quite a story though, as a Holocaust survivor and having had his pregnant wife butchered by the Manson family. In light of such darkness, can’t we just give the guy a pass this one time? I hope you don't take that sentiment as any kind of Freudian slip, hmmm?

But really, since when has a good movie’s enjoyabililty hinged solely on the faulted whims of the cast or crew? Do we hate Christina Bale’s performance in “American Psycho” even if we know that deep down the portrayal probably isn’t too far from the truth? Do we really feel bad for the reporter who got a telephone sandwich from General Maximus? Does it really matter that Quentin Tarantino probably likes feet a little too much? Maybe. But not enough to make us hate the stuff they make.

That said, I think the same argument can be extended to Mr. Polanski’s body of work. So for all of you glued to CNN waiting for that big fat extradition order to be handed down in full, listen up. Zrozumieć?

“Noz w Wodzie” (or “Knife in the Water”) was Polanski’s first film out of school (which was produced by the Ministry of Culture in 1962) and remains one of the best critically-sanctioned debut films out there.  Tightly scripted and armed with the simple premise of a bleach blonde monkey of a hitchhiker crashing a day-long sailing trip for one Polish couple, Polanski established early-on that he does a whole helluvalot more with less. And though a good deal of viewers might poo-poo artsy European flicks as just so much more philosophical excess that makes no attempt to entertain us, the quiet which Polanski instills burns with a subtle but dynamic energy that is very hard to miss. And when you consider that Polanski’s entire 12-person crew squished themselves into this one boat (to apparently minimize the cost of hotel bills during shooting), you really start to appreciate what they were able to accomplish.

At first there doesn’t even seem to be a clear mark of who is good or who is bad. The situation just IS. The fact that there are only three characters similarly hampers our expectation of fisticuffs and violence and the tension builds in an almost unnoticeable way. Yet even if the water remains placid and the sailing sequences pass by with an unnerving ease, the creative ways in which the aggression of the two men on-board the “Christine”—in which a young lady is the object of debate—almost refuses the advances of conventional story-telling. There’s an unspoken vigor about the film. Whether it’s in the wind, the rain, or the marshes, perhaps the gentle hand mannerisms which remain evocative and telling. Somehow we’re hooked, regardless of whether we can decipher the dizzying allure behind and in the actors’ bodies under such calm stress. Even trivialities like a burbling radio broadcast or a game of ‘jackstraws’ seem to hold the promise of something much more sinister, leaving us with a claustrophobic anticipation that follows us up to the very last frame.

With a jazzy score, Polanski and his boys work for a solid 94 minutes, and their refusal to give the characters’ petty jealousies a definite voice whets the blade of their tension, until, as the title might suggest, there is nothing left but sharp, sleek aggression.

Best if you like where films like Neil LeBute’s “Lakeview Terrace” or Phillip Noyce’s “Dead Calm” were going (minus, you know…all the violent elements of course)