Knife in the Water (1962)

 Roman Polanski's "Knife in the Water"

The feature film debut of filmmaker Roman Polanski, 1962's "Knife in the Water," is also his only feature film to be made in his home country of Poland. It was a highly recognized film, even competing for Best Foreign Language Film at the 1963 Academy Awards, the first ever Polish film to do so. After the success of the film, Polanski went on to direct in the UK and US to even greater success. But many still look to his original Polish feature "Knife in the Water" as one of his most innovative and important works.

The plot of the film is relatively simple and only features three characters. A man and woman, Andrzej and Krystyna, pick up a young hitchhiker on their way to go sailing. The couple invite the young man to go sailing with them and the three of them spend the day out at the lake. However, weird tensions begin to bubble up throughout this excursion, as the young man and Andrzej begin to subtly compete with each other. Eventually, things get out of hand.

Because the three characters are on a boat in the middle of a lake, there is a claustrophobic atmosphere, one that only makes the passive aggression between the two men much more psychologically tense. While watching, I vacillated between discomfort and intrigue. It's quite a strange film that mainly hinges on tone. Watching something that leans primarily on tone is interesting because you begin to explore the internal depth of its characters through this tonal lens. 

The characters, to me, specifically the men, are both posturing in various ways. Andrzej seems somewhat well-off, despite Krystyna explaining that they both come from impoverished backgrounds. There is a hard-nose air about Andrzej, as he orders the young man around and shows him up on various tasks. There is a sort of air of privilege about Andrzej. At the beginning of the film, I found myself more aligned with Andrzej, as I felt there was a certain order of things and structure. The young man coming in to the picture disrupts that structure, especially because he behaves in a sort of care-free way. I felt myself feeling hostile towards the young man for being such a 'wild card' that does whatever he wants. However, as the film progresses, I felt Andrzej to be a hypocrite, as well as the opposite of what I envisioned him as in the beginning. Because of the young man's 'care-free,' wildcard attitude, I felt that there was an air of danger about him. I ended up being off the mark because the structured, on-top-of-everything Andrzej ended up being the more 'dangerous' of the two. 

As I watched the film, I continually tried to sympathize with the various characters and found myself occupying multiple feelings of discomfort and aggravation between everyone. Towards the end of the film, Krystyna tells the young man that she knows what it's like to share an apartment with 5 other people. She details the frustrations of living with someone else, as she says "You want to sleep, the others are playing bridge. You want to study, the others want to sleep." To me, this explanation seems to represent the whole feeling of the film. While watching these characters interact, especially in a confined location, I began to reflect on just how much we as humanity don't really seem to like each other. People can be friendly, sure. But at the end of the day, humanity is inherently selfish and behave according to their own perspective and value. They have certain idiosyncrasies, certain ways of doing things, and certain expectations. This obviously is going to bump up against the selfishness of others and create conflict. As I watch the characters on this boat, I see how frustrating humanity is and how much we as humans inherently don't like each other. So, the film to me became more of a bleak expression on the connectivity, as there doesn't seem to be an inherent connectiveness between people in the slightest. This reading I had on the film comes across as rather bleak and dissatisfying, which I love.  

This bleak reading of the film seems fitting for an Eastern European piece of art. I know that Polanski never went back to Poland to make any more films, which is a shame because I feel like there could have been a lot of creative output. This was a film I very much enjoyed and it intrigued me from start to finish.