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Sometimes a film comes along that feels as if it were made specifically for me, and this Polanski masterpiece is among those films. It combines all sorts of genre bending elements to craft a fantastic thriller that starts off as a satirical comedy and soon develops into one of the most chilling and paranoid psychological horror films imaginable. Scene by scene, Polanski allows the tension to build up in such a way that by the end the viewer is left both exhausted and wanting more. In Polanski's world, there are no easy answers, and there is no defining what is real and what is imaginary. Fantasy and reality cross paths in unbelievably disturbing and insightful ways. Questions emerge, they are sometimes answered, and then those answers are found to be false. And then they are found to be true again. With such a mind bending work, Polanski forces the viewer to question everything they are witnessing, making this one o0f the greatest cinematic enigmas of all time.
With its sharp sense of black humor and satire, "The Tenant" was able to tickle my funny bone as well as it was able to tingle my spine. Perplexing, haunting, and yet still often hilarious, this film combines genres in a way only mastered by the finest auteurs of cinema (I got some Lynchian vibes from much of the dark humor and surrealism, and some of the satirical elements reminded me of "Donnie Darko" to an extent). It is as if "Rosemary's Baby" were co written by an intelligent jester with the help of the spirit of Jonathan Swift.
In what may be my favorite of all Polanski's masterpiece infested work, genres range from angry satire to black comedy to disturbing psychological drama to paranoid thriller to bone chilling surrealist horror in a way that feels natural in Polanski's truly unnatural world.
score 9/10
framptonhollis 20 May 2017
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3712013/ |
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26-4-2020 11:15:17
