oOoBarracuda

Perhaps Polanski was going for an analysis on our living spaces and what it means to pay for property--a place in the world to be safe from all outside menaces that may threaten us only to have that very space become a new hazard in itself. That sort of cautionary wisdom certainly came through, to me anyway, as I was watching THE TENANT.

As a homeowner, I remember the blissfully satisfied feeling I had walking into the home for the first time after the closing--much like Polanski in the lead role aptly communicated after his successful negotiation of the property he would now be renting--everything is exciting when you have a new place to call your own. You walk through the door with a little more bounce knowing that nothing is on the other side but your own oasis and it becomes an exciting aspect of your independent life to invite people over for drinks and music knowing you're not under anyone else's thumb, until of course, you are.

Then there's what sets in once the newness fades and you encounter the everyday realities of inhabiting your formerly new and exiting space. You have to take the trash out and you may drop banana peels or whatever else on the stairs as you take it out. Your neighbors begin to complain that you're making too much noise--your music is too loud or the friends you invite over are raucous and someone's on the other side of your door making you feel like the most inconsiderate person to ever exist while your one loudmouth friend is making it all the worse by making fun of the neighbor while they are complaining to you. Polanski really nails the feeling of being bound by the complexities of human relationships and the nicety that entails while also maintaining your social position. The suffocating feeling of being required to act a certain way depending on who it is you're interacting with and the tediousness with which we negotiate our autonomy while remaining actors in the world with others.

There's never really a time we can relax when taking part in humanity as we've created it. Those around us, especially those with whom we share space, make constant demands on us that sound like well-mannered requests or make assertions on our entire being based on one noisy night or a single oversight in common space. One can easily be debilitated by the tightrope walk between living as they wish and maintaining a cordiality in the face of such guised rudeness. Even if you are a considerate person, as Polanski's Trelkovsky, whom we see look after the common space he shares with the other tenants in his building and open himself and his living space to his neighbors in distress, that won't stop the other half of the building from thinking that he is an uncaring parasite whose mere existence is an obstruction.

This overwhelming feeling of living life microscopically with your moves being tracked by whichever of your many neighbors is looking out the window at that particular moment ready to make judgements about your character based on whatever they see can easily lead one to paranoia and Polanski's take on that paranoia is interestingly handled in THE TENANT. The best parts of the film lie in the first section, when these charges against humanity are made more subtly and interestingly before all of the eggs are thrown into the obsession basket Trelkovsky has over his apartment's past tenant. Though I don't do it here, it would be interesting to parse out what this film has to say about the previous occupants of a place and what energy the walls of a space carry with them and bring into the life of each successive owner. The script is brilliant with cinematography that becomes increasingly more claustrophobic allowing the film's commentary on pressures of living with others and their constant watching of our lives really come alive. This really is the best kind of psychological horror with emphasis on the isolating reality of human existence I was hoping to encounter throughout this project.

Much of what Polanski explores in THE TENANT he revisits in CARNAGE though with a much more biting analysis of the social contract that keeps human relationships going. Beneath the seemingly congenial courtesy we all are bound to pay each other, and the systems with which we are obligated to follow when something goes wrong lies the true form of the human being, the animal. Whether it's our reason or our speech which separates us from the rest of mammals, we are none the less literally animals by nature and thus have instincts as such. Of course, that fact doesn't mean that we won't attempt to suppress those instincts by our believed to be superior organization, and that is what we see play out in CARNAGE.

Adapted from a stage play, the audience is given two sets of parents who meet to discuss an altercation between their sons that turned physical at the park. Bookended by the opening credits, showing the scene between the two boys, and the closing scene in which we see them patching up their disagreement on their own, the entirety of the film takes place inside the victim son's apartment. Jodie Foster and John C. Reilly play the Longstreet's, a couple who puts their most liberal and cultured feet forward in meeting with the parents of the boy who left their son "disfigured" as they attempt to come to an agreement on how to move forward. The Cowan's (Kate WInslet and Christoph Waltz) are a much busier couple who have adopted a more hands-off approach to childrearing when compared to the Longstreet's. Alan (Waltz's) phone won't stop ringing and it's implied early on then explicitly stated later that he is far more invested in his work than his home and has been dragged to this meeting of the minds by his wife and would probably be just about anywhere than inside that particular apartment. Kate Winslet's Nancy is also a busy career woman, clearly neglected at home and still expected to run a house and raise a child on her own, neither activity does she seem to have been destined to do.

In the other corner we see Michael Longstreet, a working man who sells hardware among other things and wears sweaters over button-down shirts when his wife dresses him for a meeting he also doesn't wish to attend but puts in much more of a convincing effort compared to Alan who can barely keep himself off his phone long enough to listen to a sentence being uttered by anyone else in the room. His wife, who clearly felt as though it was the right thing to do to accept this meeting with the parents of a boy their son wounded and left requiring dental work puts in a great effort initially in trying to devise some middle ground between their son being a maniacal threat to society and a carelessly impulsive child. It's Penelope we quickly learn that has called this gathering to order and who believes that there is nothing that can't be solved with a good old fashioned conversation. Penelope believes in the diffusing power of talk so much that each time the Cowan's attempt to leave their apartment, and that is many many times, she calls everyone back to the table in an attempt to talk things out more fully and come to a resolution. Even as the entire summit is exploding in her face as her husband is blow drying Nancy's vomit off of her coffee table art books while she desperately sprays cologne all over the room to distinguish the smell all the while, Alan's cell phone is drying off from being dropped in the Longstreet's fish tank by his own wife--she won't give up calling everyone back together again to do some more talking.

What Penelope misses, though, is that the same constructs we live with as adults, children live with as well. She seems to believe that the situation will only sit idly without the parent's intervention. She underestimates her son, the Cowan's son, children at large really, as not having adequate utilization of the recuperative potential of talking things out. Because of this, she approaches the talk and the Cowan's with a militaristic vigilance, determined not to let anyone leave until the intended solution has been reached and agreed upon by all parties involved. Each attempted exit chips away at the artifice we all uphold in the name of cordiality. Even Penelope, the most righteous of our participants believes that the adult human is the only one capable of rejecting their animalistic urges.

I'm truly a sucker for a talky chamber piece and I saw this during a time in my life where I was having a moment with Christoph Waltz post-INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS when I vowed to see everything he had ever, and would ever be in (which really led me to some interesting then disappointing places ((it really is terrible what happens to non-American actors after they have success in an American film, I mean, THE GREEN HORNET))) Anyway, I was thankful the rewatch didn't reveal that I had just loved CARNAGE the first time because of the Christoph haze I was under at the time and that it remained, to me at least, a notable selection in the one-setting film cannon. Brilliant performances all around and a sharp critique on the human condition and the social contract both meant to mark us as superior to our animal brethren make CARNAGE a perfect addition to this project analyzing isolation and a lack of human connection.