WHO is he?
Polish-born film director, producer, actor and scenarist who has made
over 20 feature films and several short films since the late Fifties.
Polanski’s working career has spanned diverse genres, geographies and
ideological climates and his personal life riddled with numerous grave
controversies. He won the top prizes at the Berlin and Cannes Film
Festivals respectively for Cul-de-sac (1966) and The Pianist (2002) and took the Academy Award for Direction for the latter film.
WHAT are his films about?
Themes
Polanski’s early short films were absurdist lampoons of Polish
communism, while his subsequent films in England — many of them
belonging to the horror genre — were subversive critiques of
conventional notions about masculinity, psychological normalcy and moral
righteousness. The most persistent idea that pervades his body of work
is that of banality of evil. The question of what it takes for Good to
cross over to Evil is one that is at the heart of these films and which,
one imagines, has its roots in Polanski’s grappling with the fact of
the Holocaust, an event that marked a profound personal loss for him.
Style
Polanski, like Brian de Palma, was influenced by Alfred Hitchcock and
his films demonstrate a clear-eyed mastery over the techniques that
Hitchcock pioneered or refined: point-of-view shots, emphasis on
character subjectivity, claustrophobic use of interior locations and
keen eye for material objects of a scene. He additionally uses deep
space compositions, pan shots that survey the environment a character
inhabits and a sufficiently restrained soundtrack that complements the
image instead of supplanting it.
WHY is he of interest?
It would be quite unfortunate if Polanski is to be remembered primarily
by the extraordinary events surrounding his personal life (though they
are certainly vital elements). One of the foremost cinematic modernists
to have worked in the popular format, Polanski has persistently, through
his work, engaged with ideas most pertinent to modern life and his
cinema has influenced scores of important filmmakers from the newer
generation.
WHERE to discover him?
Polanski’s second feature and the first he made in England, Repulsion
(1965) charts the gradual disintegration of Carol (a perfectly cast
Catherine Deneuve), a foreigner living in a modest apartment in London. A
minimalist masterwork and a watershed for horror cinema, the film
transcends simple genre ambitions and unfolds as a critique of social
hegemony and religious dogmatism.
Courtesy- The Hindu
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