This is not a thriller, and thats a good thing. Instead, this is an intellectual film about the relationship between the viewer and the filmmaker. Anyone who knows Polanski, and for that matter many of our best filmmakers, knows he wonders about what it means to make a real movie, one that works as art. Which is to say it does more than amaze and entertain.
This movie is to Polanski as The Name of the Rose was to Umberto Eco. That was a book about what books arent. This is a movie about what movies arent.
Caution, spoilers ahead!
The story is frail -- thats the point, in fact a little too obvious for my taste. The book in question has been poured over for over 300 years, with everyone focused on the text. And that text is completely irrelevant, disposable, just as the story of the film is. The whole point of the film is in its images, the story is deliberately degraded to make the point. (The images are great: Polanksi working in partnership with LCR?)
Its all about abstraction. How could viewers not catch the layers of the inferno/hosts of angels references?
--at the bottom level, you have the Frenchman who owns the book but isn't interested except for the beauty of the binding
--then you have the Baroness who has spent her life writing about the devil and never even considering the pictures, even though she had the best clue--she SAW him.
--at a higher level, you have Liana Tefler, who knows theres some power in the artifact but is still focused on the text (and incidentally sex)
--higher still you have Balkan who knows the text is worthless, and the pictures the real value but thinks the magic is in the pictures
--then you have the two brothers who have the power to tinker with the power of the pictures
--finally Corso who we see moving from the bottom of the list to this layer where he knows the power is not in the pictures themselves, but in the quest. (At the beginning, the value of the book to him is neither in its text, nor pictures, but in its binding and rarity.)
--then we have the girl who IS the pictures
--and we have the viewer.
This is a cross, four people stacked, the two brothers and then three more people stacked -- A layering actually used in early 17th century tracts on the nature of abstraction, which in retrospect are called occult. In fact it is the same layering of semiotics outlined by Eco, and much earlier used in the apprentice novels of Goethe (including Faust, which this story quotes).
Thats nine players, eight levels of consciousness created by the filmmaker, each layer tossing aside something. Who is the ninth player, the final abstractionist? You.
This movie is to Polanski as The Name of the Rose was to Umberto Eco. That was a book about what books arent. This is a movie about what movies arent.
Caution, spoilers ahead!
The story is frail -- thats the point, in fact a little too obvious for my taste. The book in question has been poured over for over 300 years, with everyone focused on the text. And that text is completely irrelevant, disposable, just as the story of the film is. The whole point of the film is in its images, the story is deliberately degraded to make the point. (The images are great: Polanksi working in partnership with LCR?)
Its all about abstraction. How could viewers not catch the layers of the inferno/hosts of angels references?
--at the bottom level, you have the Frenchman who owns the book but isn't interested except for the beauty of the binding
--then you have the Baroness who has spent her life writing about the devil and never even considering the pictures, even though she had the best clue--she SAW him.
--at a higher level, you have Liana Tefler, who knows theres some power in the artifact but is still focused on the text (and incidentally sex)
--higher still you have Balkan who knows the text is worthless, and the pictures the real value but thinks the magic is in the pictures
--then you have the two brothers who have the power to tinker with the power of the pictures
--finally Corso who we see moving from the bottom of the list to this layer where he knows the power is not in the pictures themselves, but in the quest. (At the beginning, the value of the book to him is neither in its text, nor pictures, but in its binding and rarity.)
--then we have the girl who IS the pictures
--and we have the viewer.
This is a cross, four people stacked, the two brothers and then three more people stacked -- A layering actually used in early 17th century tracts on the nature of abstraction, which in retrospect are called occult. In fact it is the same layering of semiotics outlined by Eco, and much earlier used in the apprentice novels of Goethe (including Faust, which this story quotes).
Thats nine players, eight levels of consciousness created by the filmmaker, each layer tossing aside something. Who is the ninth player, the final abstractionist? You.