The Tenant
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Movie Reviews of The Tenant
Movie Review: Roman Polanski: The Tenant
Summary: 5 Stars
Excellent psychological thriller and interesting look at Roman Polanski's early work in the trilogy of psychological thrillers. Films of this caliber are very rare anymore. I enjoyed this film very much and recommend it highly.Movie Review: Speedy delivery
Summary: 5 Stars
almost like those good pizza places that deliver in under 30 minutes! excellent condition ... had my order with in 5 days of me placing my order!!! and i have a lot problems with ppl on amazon. this one worked out excellentMovie Review: Movin' On Up.........
Summary: 5 Stars
Original. Witty. Ironic. Creepy. Thoughtful. Detailed. VERY KAFKAESQUE.......For anyone who has ever felt like they had to be quiet when coming or going from their apartment......Movie Review: And you thought *your* Landlord was rough!
Summary: 4 Stars
Roman Polanski stars and directs in this vicious, haunting little conte-cruelle set in Paris, in which a hapless, mild-mannered Parisian bureaucrat M. Trelkovsky (Polanski, channeling up Dustin Hoffman) rents an apartment whose previous tenant flung herself to her death from the bedroom window, and who now lingers comatose in the hospital, minutes from death. Trelkovsky negotiates a deal with merciless landlord Monsieur Zy (Melvyn Douglas looming like an ancient human stormcloud), predicates it on the death of the hapless former tenant Simone Choule, and moves in on the news that the woman is dead and cold. Freakiness ensues.
Warning: this movie is vintage Polanski, very textured, very detailed, very meticulous, exceptionally deranged and disturbing---but not for the impatient. For best results, wait for an overcast day with the wind roaring in the trees and the rain pattering against the window, get a fire roaring in the hearth, drink some well-aged Scotch, and sit back and truly ensconce yourself in the weirdness.
"The Tenant" is a waking nightmare in which you can't help but feel pity---and unfolding horror---for the dreamer.
Every one of us, I think, has had an experience with a nightmare landlord. When I was a feckless undergraduate, I rented an apartment from a miserly but prominent lawyer, a wretched creature straight from Dickens who materialized on my doorstep at 2 in the morning hours after I had called to warn him of my pipes bursting. The man was about 150 years old, full of scowling fury, and cursed at me to get a bucket as I was a "useless, philandering young fool" and had destroyed his apartment---despite the fact that the pipes were later found to have been indifferently maintained for decades.
The simple question at the dark heart of "The Tenant" is this: at what point are we ourselves? How much of ourselves must we sacrifice---at work, at play, in our daily lives---to live in society? At what point to we cease to be? Trelkovsky, eager to please, diffident in all aspects of his life and his civil-service job, anxious to avoid offense, lounges drunk on the bed of his lover (the astonishing Isabelle Adjani, here hopelessly gorgeous) and wonders by what right he considers himself---his being, his soul, his identity---to reside in his head. Why not the nose? The body? The arm? Or perhaps the tooth, one of which he finds concealed in a hole drilled into the apartment wall, swathed in a cotton ball, hidden behind the heavy wardrobe of the apartment's doomed former tenant.
Worse still, poor Trelkovsky suffers the renter's worst nightmare: he doesn't even have a toilet in his apartment, and has to make a sojourn through ill-lit, peeling hallways to go to the bathroom.
Director Polanski is note-perfect as the meek and meticulous Trelkovsky, eager to please, anxious to avoid offense. And equally note-perfect is Polanski's meticulous attention to detail in the atmosphere of malice: a harmless, noisy house-warming party brings the wicked attention of his draconian neighbors upon him, earns him the disdain of the matronly concierge (Shelley Winters, who shuffles and ambles and grumbles with lugubrious alacrity), and merits a nasty warning from his landlord. Worse follows his refusal to sign a petition against a supposedly "noisy" neighbor, and Trelkovsky finds himself constantly warned against making too much noise, consequently relegated to scuttling quietly about like a mouse in his own apartment.
"The Tenant" is an invitation to follow Trelkovsky into a cycle the hapless renter should be familiar with: righteous indignation, an eagerness to please and forge allies, and ultimately a descent into obesssion and madness. Why does the local cafe insist on serving Trelkovsky hot chocolate and Marlboro smokes, both favored by his suicidal predecessor? What is the meaning of the late-night tenants who stand for hours in the communal restroom, looking for all the world like 16th century Russian Icons, standing like friezes, not moving a muscle? And why does Trelkovsky wake from tortured dreams to find himself cloaked in Simone's nightgown, his fingernails painted, his face rouged?
The transfer on this skeletal DVD is gorgeous---the film looks like it could have been shot yesterday---though there are certainly problems, not least of which is the paucity of features on this otherwise crazily intriguing, often baffling little sliver of cinematic grue. Polanski, already in the throes of legal difficulties over his alleged pedophilia in the United States, had fled to France, and the film was shot in French as "Le Locataire". Alas, the only DVD you can find of this brutal little gem is dubbed atrociously in English. Polanski, Douglas, and Winters all speak their lines in English, but it's jarring to hear French gens-d'armes barking out Brooklyn-esque brogues, and it takes you completely out of the movie to hear a clearly French waiter's request voiced like an Imperial Stormtrooper from "Star Wars".
But these are minor quibbles, and the character of Monsieur Trelkovsky is without question goes down in a fearsome triumvirate of disturbing cinematic cross-dressers, ranked with Norman Bates and Buffalo Bill. For the patient, "The Tenant" is a study of cold, congealed horror, and well worth the price of rent.
Movie Review: Don't Watch This One Alone in Your Apartment!
Summary: 4 Stars
Roman Polanski is, without a doubt, my favorite post-studio system director. I adore the look of Jean Luc Godard and Martin Ritt, as well as enjoying almost everything Woody Allen had ever made(yes, I can even stand the bad ones). However, Polanski, to me, is a true genius of the modern era. Multi-talented, if he had one superior strength, it would be in his construction of the psychological drama. Like no other filmmaker, Polanski has always had the ability of placing the viewer inside the mind of the troubled soul. Although it is a place one would really never like to visit, there is something compelling about really getting inside a person's trauma, seeing it from the inside out, as if Polanski has somehow gotten his whole crew inside his lead actor's biology.
I feel that he has never cut quite as deeply under the skin as in one of his last masterworks, The Tenant. Anyone to read this critique can get a real breakdown of the film in any of the other 'critiques' here(as in the world of modern film 'criticism', the 'critics' on the Amazon pages are merely more of the same: simply capsule reviewers, pontificating on their so-called immensity of depth and understanding of said media). On the other hand, I would just prefer to give a critique.
Sven Nykvist, The Tenant's photographer, had been shooting most of the Ingmar Bergman works since the early 60s. His attention to detail and use of different lenses aids immensely in sending this film down the corridor of madness that exists in both the aesthetic world and the psychological one of our hero. Polanski, as not just the film's director but the main character here, is a perfect fit in the 'dual' role of the lead, both insecure meek mouse and paranoiac mental case. He not only visually acts out the part(s), but characterizes his downward transition through vocal intonation. Without really thinking about this, it's the audible tones of his character that guide the viewer/listener through his stages of digression.
Now, for anyone who has ever seen his earlier work 'Repulsion', that is one of my favorite thrillers and a work that made my top 100 list of personal favorites. This may seem quite odd considering the uncomfortable storyline to that film, but, again, I actually felt like I had gotten inside the character of Catherine Deneuve, somewhat like taking a psych course but living it at the same time. However discomforting his earlier films may be, though, The Tenant surpasses them all. In fact, this is a picture, however much I like it-and I like it quite a bit-that could never make it on my all-time favorites list, mainly due to how much more troubling it is to sit through than even most of the uncomforting works of filmdom.
Filmmakers like David Lynch, Ken Russell, and John Waters come to mind. However, with these directors, the most bothersome their work becomes, it's still just a pseudo-fantasy world of surreality. Sure, possibly a bit irritating and offputting, but still just a film. In Polanski, the film is almost always a reality-and often one the viewer would just like to end. Yet, we cannot seem to turn away and stop watching-completely drawn towards the darkness, immersed in a world that at once is both shocking and repulsive as well as being exciting and engrossing. I can handle quite a bit when it comes to visual media, so long as there is some point to sustaining my attention. Here, though, although this film is not graphically violent or sexual in any manner, really, the subject matter, itself, seemed to make me dizzy with nausea. It's really hard to explain this factor except to note that this is not a film which I would go back to very often.
On the other hand, it may end up becoming an annual Halloween treat for me, one that, although year by year may consistantly and obnoxiously trick me, I could keep coming back for more, like a dog returning to the master who kicks him. Being a student of film much more than just a moderate filmgoer seeking entertainment, I thrive on films such as this that can take control of every nerve-ending and twist them until one's muscles begin to stiffen. Perhaps, then, the bad dream that The Tenant embodies, however upsetting, is most impressive and worthwhile due to the attention of detail and depth and, well, the reality that it conveys. Yes, reality, for there is nothing short of this that comes off more terrifying when wishing most to wake from the nightmare.