The truth is, when a film overwhelms me this much, im not really sure how to begin…
Skolimowski is one of the most versatile and experimental directors ive watched, poland, england, belgium, germany; suspense, horror, comedy. He seems to try almost everything, almost everywhere, at almost any time. Although his charaterstic signature is undeniable, most people cant pin down the reasons, motives, and specific traits that make his style and storytelling so personal. Maybe that very quality something mysterious, elusive, ever changing is one of the central and most slippery aspects of his work. Perhaps what allows us to approach him lies in the opposite movement to confinement: an openness, receptive to the fluidity of dreamlike states and poetic experience.
Even though for many and including me, “blow up” is the film that best reflects the years of swinging london, “deep end” beats it by a mile and a half in rhythm and sensuality with Cat Evans sharing the film’s soundtrack with the germans Can.
It might be because of the original premise: a teenager who, in the middle of the sexual revolution, begins to discover a world his parents and school had kept from him…
It might be the unusual gallery of perverse supporting characters who drift through the film…
It might be because, as he would do the following year with the masterful “Harold and Maude”, Cat Stevens once again crowns the film through the emotional force of his songs…
It might be because, speaking of Harold and Maude, it feels like the perfect companion piece for a double feature with this earlier film…
It might be the peculiar sense of humor it exudes…
It might be how punky the dizzying pace of some sequences feels to me…
It might be the symbolic weight it gives to color and lighting in certain scenes…
It might be those “aqua-oneiric” shots…
Or it might be because, in a single shot, Skolimowski manages to condense all the weight and tension built up until then, giving the film a new, tragic, and beautiful meaning.
Whats certain in all of this is that im finished. Lost in “the deep end”
The truth is, when a film overwhelms me this much, im not really sure how to begin…
Skolimowski is one of the most versatile and experimental directors ive watched, poland, england, belgium, germany; suspense, horror, comedy. He seems to try almost everything, almost everywhere, at almost any time. Although his charaterstic signature is undeniable, most people cant pin down the reasons, motives, and specific traits that make his style and storytelling so personal. Maybe that very quality something mysterious, elusive, ever changing is one of the central and most slippery aspects of his work. Perhaps what allows us to approach him lies in the opposite movement to confinement: an openness, receptive to the fluidity of dreamlike states and poetic experience.
Even though for many and including me, “blow up” is the film that best reflects the years of swinging london, “deep end” beats it by a mile and a half in rhythm and sensuality with Cat Evans sharing the film’s soundtrack with the germans Can.
It might be because of the original premise: a teenager who, in the middle of the sexual revolution, begins to discover a world his parents and school had kept from him…
It might be the unusual gallery of perverse supporting characters who drift through the film…
It might be because, as he would do the following year with the masterful “Harold and Maude”, Cat Stevens once again crowns the film through the emotional force of his songs…
It might be because, speaking of Harold and Maude, it feels like the perfect companion piece for a double feature with this earlier film…
It might be the peculiar sense of humor it exudes…
It might be how punky the dizzying pace of some sequences feels to me…
It might be the symbolic weight it gives to color and lighting in certain scenes…
It might be those “aqua-oneiric” shots…
Or it might be because, in a single shot, Skolimowski manages to condense all the weight and tension built up until then, giving the film a new, tragic, and beautiful meaning.
Whats certain in all of this is that im finished. Lost in “the deep end”
