Repulsion

Well, that was a mistake. I had no idea Repulsion was a horror film. Incidentally, one that takes place almost entirely inside an apartment. It's actually the first film in a series of Polanski films dubbed, "The Apartment Trilogy." Nothing like a good ole solitary descent into insanity to lift the spirits. Fuck. Everything about the movie was unsettling; the phantasmagoric floating of the camera as it slowly zooms or pulls away; the vertiginous warping of perspective as Catherine Deneuve's character, Carol, loses more and more of her mind to frightful dreams of home intrusion and rape; the apartment's disorienting stretching of dimensions and the way it repeatedly unseams itself. Then there are the camera angles. Always appearing too short, or too tall, the camera stalks Deneuve in a way that is deliciously voyeuristic. Shots smother her. The cinematography feels close and confined, almost claustrophobic. Deneuve's unaffected, stolid eyes and docile facial expressions belie an impressive richness of emotional depth, helplessness and terror. The sustained stillness of her stare, over the course of the film, has the affect on the viewer of steadily increasing agitation. Her alluring looks and her phlegmatic disassociation from the happenings around her make her curiously charming.

A clever use of sound, always shrill and ringing and cyclical, helps propel the film into looping vignettes of fear and lunacy. A machine-gun drum and some fierce flashes of a blade lay waste to an attempted sexual assault. Later, the ticking of a clock is the only sound we hear at the first of several rape sequences. It replaces even the sound of her screams. During a different sequence, the quick ringing of church-bells amplify the discord onscreen as an intruder tries to force himself on Deneuve. Ringing phones, doorbells and a cacophony of other jarring, repetitive sounds create a mechanical milieu of clockwork madness. The only scenes with overlaid music (and there are only two) are those where Deneuve's character is walking through town, being ogled and verbally harassed by men as upbeat jazz plays.

The viewer spends a lot of time looking with Carol at inanimate objects; a dresser or a lamp, a chair, peeling wallpaper, a rotting rabbit. At times, Carol mirrors these objects, seeming as lifeless, inert and hollow as a pillowcase. Special attention is paid to cracks in the wall, on the sidewalk, or the shape of a hair inside a man's ear. Oddly, all of the cracks bear resemblance to the Y-shape made by a woman standing nude with her legs together. Carol's sleepy, blank eyes always appear to be somewhere other than where she currently is, signifying a profound emotional crisis or a pending psychotic break. The worsening of her condition is such that, as the camera gets closer, the viewer feels ever further away. A beautiful inversion. Visually, there is much emphasis placed on walls, both figuratively and metaphorically. Sometimes they are hard and cracked, other times, as soft and impressionable as clay. The walls, as they show tears, literally tear at her. There is something sexually allegorical about Colin, her suitor, pounding down the door and physically penetrating the space of her apartment. An act, deeply suggestive on its own, ends in a splatter of blood and then the wiping with paper of the blood from the door. It is not surprising that he is placed in the bath after his murder.

Throughout the film, both subtly and overtly, there is a theme of male aggression directed at women. Early on in the film we see male characters grasp at control by grabbing a woman's face or arm or ass and, later, Carol's sister is slapped in the face by her lover as he tries to help her "get a hold of herself." Grubby hands routinely burst through the walls to grope at Deneuve's legs and breasts as she tries to walk down a corridor or leave the bathroom. The multiple rape nightmares/fantasies say all they need to about male sexual aggression. Another recurring motif in the film is the dichotomy between Carol's meekness and her strength; she does only what she wants to, ignores pleas and imperatives, cannot be controlled by any man, and kills the ones who make her feel at all threatened...all while being conspicuously disinterested and quietly aloof. It is a fierce depiction of femininity. Her romantic interest, after he expresses concern for her in the hallway, gets the Clue treatment when she bashes his head in with a candlestick and then disposes of him in the bathtub.

It was a disturbing movie, and now I have to go to bed.

Post Christmas Blues

The day after Christmas and all through the house, not a creature is stirring, not even a mouse. It's cold and my bed looks especially empty. The blankets lay wrapped in a knot of wrinkled twirls, the same way I'd left them days ago. I'm greeted by the sudden onset of post-nasal drip, which must surely be the symptom of a mild allergic reaction to my girlfriend's parents' dog, Toby. Christmas was good. Nothing ended in disaster. No trees or houses were burned. The house's burglary alarm did go off, though. All gifts given and received were a hit. There was beer, wine, and far too much food; all of it excellently cooked.

The day after a few days of plenty always takes some recalibration. The emptiness of the apartment you return to feels fuller, heavier, as though the entire vastness of space exists between the foot of your couch and the head of your bed. And you never feel quite alone with your loneliness. It takes on a personality of its own and coughs and sneezes in uneven fits, continually reminding you of its existence. Soon you feel contaminated by it, and quarantined with it.

Alone, and in such bad company.

For this, there's always distraction; some movie or book to get lost in. But perhaps it's better to meditate. To sit alone with these unlocalized feelings of ennui. More and more they seem to accumulate as we age. So then it's probably best to understand it, to discover its weakness, to integrate or extricate it. It is all we can do.

What else? I can't wait for the New Year. I'm eager to eat right and get my pudgy, scrawny ass back in the gym. Holly got me a Vitamix blender. I can use it to juice vegetables and make smoothies. It can even make soups! Yes, I can see us now, going down to the Sunday farmer's market and stocking up on local fruits and vegetables, preparing our own wholesome, hearty meals that we can eat during the week. A return to simpler times. Times before technology and electricity...but with the added conveniences of a high horse-power blender. Ah, modernity.

Well, fuck it - I'm going to watch a Roman Polanski movie called  Repulsion. I've only a few days to enjoy my time at home before I pack everything back into my red duffel bag and head to Vancouver to visit friends.

I predict there will be beer, wine, and far too much food.

Wait a Minute

It was raining. Hard at first. Then slow. Mildly, at irregular intervals the sky opened up and bled down onto the street. The air was cold. Gusty. Everyone walked with quickened purpose and direction. Each step on the sidewalk, if one wasn't careful, could be drenched in disaster. So long, new suede shoes. Puddles gathered as water fell in splashes and sprinkles and torrents. It was just after sunset so the rain was semi-camouflaged in darkness and could only be accurately measured when seen in a cone of street light, or the headlights of a car. My feet, after a while of walking, had become so wet that the tips of my toes were cold. A little longer and they'd be totally numb. Waiting for the bus I noticed that my stomach was swollen and warm. Compared to the rest of my body, my belly seemed immune to the damp cold. Earlier I'd eaten a large bowl of spicy ramen inside a restaurant owned and operated by a bunch of young Japanese people. They were attentive, friendly, and fast. The ramen was deliciously spicy and flavorful. My favorite part was the egg. Existing somewhere on the spectrum between hard-boiled and perfectly poached, it melted in my mouth something sweet. Like honey the yolk drooped slowly out from its soft, white casing, and seeped into the stew. Sometime during dinner my nose started running and I had to use two napkins - each soaked all the way through - to stop the leak. Now that my nose had opened, the broth smelled wonderfully of garlic and pork fat and it had an almost sinful minerality to it. My entire mouth and throat were awash in a rich, salty, seaweed and mushroom and egg noodle ocean. The soup's temperature, combined with the heat of the added chilis and spices, made my mouth so hot that I would have stopped eating, were it not for the irresistibility of the taste. I brought my greedy lips to the spoon once more and bowed before the broth's small, silver altar. I drank it in. Over and over I repeated this ritual until the soup was gone. Its beauty bathed me; sanctified my tongue and teeth. It was a meal so hearty it comforted me even as I stood under the meager shelter of the bus stop in the rain and wind.

Beside me appeared a homeless man with an old shopping cart. The cart was blackened with grime and covered in filthy blankets and plastic bags. It was wet and it stunk badly. Entranced by a metal newspaper dispenser next to a street pole at the bus stop, the man bent over and began pounding on it and muttering something unintelligible. Much to his dismay, it seemed the newspaper tin didn’t understand his message. He began flailing spasmodically and speaking in tongues as he drove his point home in fanciful expository to the box. But the box didn’t budge. Still undeterred and ever resilient, the man began yanking on the dispenser door, opening and closing it forcefully while he laughed and shouted, so that the box appeared to be chewing on the wet air. Suddenly he jerked his head up at me. I feared the box had finally told him something. Something about me. Suspicion spread over his face and he snapped upright. He cocked his head and pushed out his lower jaw as he eyed me like Popeye. The sign next to me said the bus wasn’t coming for another 7 minutes. As if realizing only now that I was able to see him, he recognized that perhaps he had been staring at me a bit too long; that I might be onto him. His eyes jumped away and he twisted his body 90 degrees to the left, away from me. It was at this time he began consulting with the tin again. In an attempt to lubricate the conversation which had dwindled between the two of them, he began slamming the door more frantically than before and making sounds with his mouth that an ape would make while on methamphetamines. The sign said the bus wasn’t coming for 7 minutes. I shifted my weight uneasily and briefly broke eye contact in an attempt to make him more at ease. I took out my phone to check the time and noticed I had no service.

6 minutes. To pass the time I scratched my head, coughed loudly to prove I was capable of making sounds, and did a couple of quick twists at the waist to show that I was spry and could whip his fucking ass if he were to try something. When I looked up the sign still said 6 minutes. The rain had picked up again or I would have waited under the awning of the adjacent building. He was looking at me and riffling through his shopping cart for something as inconspicuously as he possibly could. He even smiled as he did it. Never before had I wanted a bus to come so badly. Sure, there were times I’d needed a bus when diarrhea was knocking at my back door, or when I needed to be at a store before they closed, but this was different. This was life or death. I couldn’t believe I was going to die like this. 6 minutes. C’mon, was the fucking clock broken? Dark, nightmarish thoughts began to dance around my head. I remembered recently, maybe 4 months back, when a homeless man had been found standing at the corner of Market Street with a suitcase full of body parts. Had anyone ever been convicted? Fuck.

The man started to giggle. Now he had something in his arms. Because of the angle, and the way his shopping cart stood between us, I couldn’t tell what it was. The way he was eyeing it though, it bothered me. He was craning his neck and looking quickly at it and then me. He’d whisper something and then shhh himself. 5 minutes. God, had only two minutes passed since I’d been here? I began inventorying my defenses; keys in my pocket, and a scarf - surely I could make a weapon out of those, right? Desperation. I’d reached it. Keys and a scarf. Holy fuck, buddy, I’m gonna die. I remembered how when I was a kid, to protect myself from thugs in my neighborhood I would carry around a dog chain, to which I’d fastened a big combination lock, so that I had a modern equivalent of a medieval mace. Later, when I was in highs cool, I considered myself more sophisticated and upgraded my weapon of choice to a fashionably concealed, 5-inch pocket knife. How had my youthful resourcefulness rendered me so unprepared? I was utterly defenseless. Did he have a knife? A sword? A bayonet? A gun? A machine gun? Assault rifle? Grenade? Bomb? Weapons of mass destruction? 4 minutes.

Rain continued to fall in sheets. The bum now sat nearer, on one of the bus stop seats. Whatever he had, he had under his coat, talking to it and petting it as though it were a infant. I shuffled my feet and stretched my neck a few times like Rocky Balboa’s anorexic, malnourished cousin, Cocky Ballblowah. Then the unthinkable happened. I pulled a muscle in my neck. Searing pain spread out all through my neck as I felt the muscle strain and cramp up all the way down into my shoulder blade. I couldn’t move my head to the left. Instead I had to turn my entire body to see the bum. I must have hissed out in pain because the bum stopped his baby talk. When I turned to face him he was staring dead at me. I didn’t look at the sign. I knew it was 3 minutes, or that maybe it had gone all the way back up to 5.

All of the times I’d had sex lasting longer than 7 minutes now seemed an eternity. I marveled at my endurance and briefly contemplated the mysteries of my sexual prowess. In the bedroom I was an Adonis. Now, I was a dead man. 3 minutes. Well, there we were. It had all come down to this. Thirty years, for this. I waited to see what he would do. I meant him no harm, surely I wasn’t going to be the first one to attack. The toothless old man, with his nicotine colored hair and beard, reached down into his dingy, wet, navy wind jacket. I backed up, slightly, to put a little distance between us in case it was a sword or a crossbow full of hypodermic AIDS needles, and I heard a noise. It sounded like a cat meowing. Jesus. That’s what the name on its red collar said. He smiled and reached toward his cart and pulled out a can of cat food.

Wow. I thought...

Wait a god-damned minute! But, then, I couldn’t; the bus had arrived.