The Palace

It is New Year's Eve 1999, at a luxury hotel in Switzerland. A grotesque gallery of the filthy rich gather to see in the new year, with many afraid the Y2K bug is imminently about to destroy western civilization...

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Roman Polanski's latest film flopped at the box office and got awful reviews, but of course that's mostly because of the present political climate and the line the mainstream media have taken to "cancel" its creator. The film IS indubitably erratic, especially early on: full use is not made of the majority of story-lines, and most don't conclude in any satisfactory way. It also feels a little rushed and uncertain and as though several corners (and scenes) were cut. But there are a bunch of funny and ludicrous moments along the way, and the overall freak-show tone of it - the nightmarish way it depicts humanity, especially the very rich - feels much like something out of Gulliver's Travels. It doesn't more than half-succeed at any point, but at least it's reaching for something.

The cast has a variety of slightly over the hill famous faces, like Mickey Rourke, Fanny Ardant, and John Cleese as a nonagenarian oil tycoon celebrating his one year wedding anniversary with his dumpy young bride. But the best performance is probably by Hansueli Kopf, as the hotel director tirelessly trying to please them all and hold the show together.

Polanski has always been terrible at comedy; much too broad and heavy-handed, and it's clear some of the things that make him laugh don't translate into tickling most other people. But the truth is, I definitely enjoyed this one more than any of his other ones, like "The Fearless Vampire Killers", "What?" and "Pirates". I could be wrong, but the impression I get is that he just wanted one time to make a decent comedy before he dies, and if this does turn out to be the last film he ever makes, he really didn't do as bad as we're being told.

The media are underplaying the major event of the new Roman Polanski with the categorisation: a bad Polanski, probably his worst. And the scribblers forget one fact: a bad Polanski is largely subject to impossibility. Perhaps the popularly celebrated condemnation is still due to the witch hunt as part of the unspeakable MeToo smear campaign. In "J'Accuse" there was no artistic attack surface whatsoever, but here there is a little more. A light and entertaining film, undoubtedly in the realm of comedy, so intentional, so brought to the screen. The Palace is obviously modelled on the screwball comedies of the pre-50s.

We find ourselves in the millennium night of 1999, a luxury hotel in the Swiss mountains, a meeting place for the formerly beautiful and supposedly rich. A rendezvous of bizarre characters, chaotic events and crazy entanglements unfolds, all madly directed by hotel manager Oliver Mansucci, currently Germany's best acting export. Lots of familiar faces and not a minute of boredom, mission accomplished.

No rating is possible for this. The Palace is a deliberate, intentional trash, vulgar kitsch realised with impeccable skill.

It takes a special kind of filmmaker to make people sit through a parade of ugliness(in its most "unpoetic" way) and vulgarity, and even make them have a little bit of fun in-between. In my case, a packed house, not a single walk out, although the urge was strong, particularly during the first half. That's due to the filmmaking talents of the director. He couldn't help but be good even in a film intentionally off-putting.

One cannot help, but find a certain kind of repulsive beauty in the fact that a 90 year old director of Rosemary's Baby, Chinatown, The Tenet, works that will live for as long as the art of cinema itself lives, chose this to be his possible swan song, the ending of this movie to be the last scene of his filmography. The Palace is a juicy middle finger from Polanski to everbody and everything, including, and most importantly, his own self.

No rating, but certainly worth a watch. The rating is impossible, because for what the film tries to achieve, it achieves with great skill and tremendous success. Low or high scores only signify people's opinions of an idea of such a movie, not the movie itself. The Palace sitting at 0% on Rotten Tomatoes is a great representation of this. Polanski got our lovely critics exactly where he wanted them, made them part of the joke. A bold, thorough critic, if he saw through Polanski and his intentions with The Palace and wanted to turn it all on its head, would destroy the film in his review, but in the end give it a 100% without explanation. Alas...

The movie was never boring, and i never felt grabing a smartphone.

If the movie is for you, depends on your type of humor - it's just as in the trailers, if you are just happy with this type of simple and stereotypical humor, the movie might very well be worth watching. It's not bad, and its certainly not for feminist's. But if you'd like to take your (old) father to the cinema once more, you'll both be happy.

You can't compare it to a masterpiece like grand hotel budapest.

But if i'd see the movie in free tv somewhere in the future again, i'd certainly watch it.

If you see it as a last movie from polanski, with his high age, it's neither a masterpiece and its certainly not a failure either.

I for myself liked it. See it for yourself, just don't put your expectations too high.

A riff on Knife in the water ... though do not compare those two! So no pun intended as always. Polanski has not lost his touch. Whatever one may think of him personally (I won't go into his legal issues, you either know about them, can look for them and/or do not care) ... he is a really good director! The cast he assembled speaks for itself.

The comedy is something you have to like, but the Hotel Manager is absolutely fantastic! Then you have John Cleese who is able to perform ... in many ways! Even without text ... as his comedy tour says (title): watch me before I die - I am paraphrasing here ... but you get the point.

That said, there is a lot of mayhem going on ... and it all has the absolute highlight at the end ... cgi "joke" ... but that should not matter ... had a few laugh out loud moments myself ... you can have quite a lot of fun with it.