So Noted: The Tenant [Le Locataire] (Roman Polanski, 1976)

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So Noted: The Tenant [Le Locataire] (Roman Polanski, 1976) May 31st 2012, 00:17 skip to main | skip to sidebar The Tenant [Le Locataire] (Roman Polanski, 1976) Polanski's adaptation of Roland Topor's The Tenant is disorienting, distressing, but amazingly intriguing.  Well done.  There's something very Kafkaesque about it, even if there's no way I can cite the source text (primarily because I can't find it -- the library doesn't have a single copy and neither do other used bookstores in Madison).  But I suppose that doesn't matter all that much, because it is the general overwhelming sensation of the uncanny that translates so well to the screen rather than, say, a specific passage.  In the cinematic landscape, I thought of The Trial at various points through main character Trelkovsky's escalating paranoia.  The film is a labyrinth of suspicions where deliberating what's real and isn't matters less than simply surviving the madness.  But of course, it's impossible to escape one's own head, and while I do not find myself in the same circumstances as Mr. Trelkovsky, there's something genuine about his character's experience.  Perhaps it's because I am distrustful of others and frequently weary.  Kafka's character, Joseph K., felt oppressed as if the world were shutting him in eternal darkness, and sadly, I feel like that.  But there's certainly a comic element to this film in certain sequences.  The brief scene at the movie theatre during Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon (credited here as Operation: Dragon on a poster?) is ridiculous in a pre-Seinfeld "The Raincoats"-way (in the above picture), and another brief one at Trelkovsky's co-worker's apartment with the loud nationalist music is equally bizarre.  If I have to capture one aspect of the film, though, it's the party scene at 64 minutes, and the music by Philippe Sarde.  It's completely hypnotic.  Though the scene isn't the most essential in the film by any means, the mood created by the repeating arrangement is inescapable and additive.  It reminds me so much of my favorite Baltimore band YEVETO score for The Golem.  Watch (and listen): The film's urgency was captured in Jeff Vordam's review of Barton Fink; while I was aware of this film adaptation for some time, it took some diligence to track an official copy down.  Thankfully, the library system has one lone copy of the Paramount DVD still in circulation from a decade ago. Despite no supplementary content, it surprisingly looks great; The Tenant has been well-preserved.  Now that it's out of print, here's to hoping Criterion picks it up as they did Repulsion and Cul-de-sac. Because the film's native language track is English, and the film is set in Paris, France, there's English dubbing.  While I'm always lukewarm about such manipulation, it doesn't really detract from the overall experience.  You'll be too busy psychoanalyzing yourself psychoanalyzing Trelkovsky in the end, haha.

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