Crappy film

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

This is my first time to watch a Polish film. I remember the background music of vintage jazz in it is comfortable, especially the sound of saxophone is nice. This story seems a relaxed sailing trip of a middle-aged couple and a young man at first glance, but we can enjoy each relationship. It's sometimes peace, and sometimes like comedy. I couldn't stop laughing for a while because the funny scene appears so unexpected. After watching it, we can find the good points of a sailing trip, and we'll imagine Poland as such a nice place. It's very hard to understand what's going on because of turn of events at the end of the story, but it's wonderful.

A bourgeois couple, a jaded sportswriter and his trophy wife, are off to spend a weekend on their yacht. After bickering about her driving, the husband picks up a brash, immature young hitchhiker to spite his wife. The young man joins them on the boat, and the two men knock heads, till the young man's knife ups the stakes, becoming a catalyst for events that will shake all three to their core. Godard says all you need is a girl and a gun for a movie, but Polanski shows a girl, knife and a boat will work just as well. The two males strut and pout their chests, climbing masts and diving in the water in primitive courtship displays. The woman watches and observes, and at the end we realise she has been judging all along. Experience is dismissive of youth, youth is judgmental of age. Polanski uses his actors as framing devices and the jutting angularity of it all matches the stiff sexual tension and suppressed testosterone. The jousting turns ugly at the end, causing the cracks in the marriage to become gaping chasms. The couple reach a point where whichever way they go, their marriage will never be the same again. Subtle, inventive and stands the test of time.

My summary line was Krystyna's (Jolanta Umecka) description of the young hitchhiker stated directly to him. She could just as easily have told her husband Andrzej (Leon Niemczyck) the same thing, he being twice the age of the hitchhiker but just as dumb. Reading from the DVD cover of the movie, we're told that this film has 'gut-churning suspense in Polanski's seminal psychological thriller', and in it he revealed his delight in exploring sexual and class boundaries with ruthless precision.Well excuse me for missing all of this, but the main hang-up for me was just how big a jerk Andrzej was. Right from the outset, there was absolutely no reason for him to practically run the guy over with his car, only to wind up giving him a ride and then virtually begging him to board the boat with Andrzej and his wife for an overnight sail. None of what Andrzej subjected the young man to had any motivation behind it that was explained or stated, and it wouldn't have been a big chore to do so to help the viewer understand why Andrzej was acting the way he was. For his part, the actions of the hitchhiker were questionable as well. Why accept the offer for the boat ride when the only interaction between the two men had already had negative consequences? Having read a few of the other reviews presented on this board, it seems the predominant word used to describe the interaction of the two was that of posturing. Well that's all well and good, but in that case, the set up should have done a better job of creating that tension based on Krystyna's presence. Yes it's true she was there on the boat and managed to flaunt her physical attributes in a way to arouse her husband's jealousy, but I never got the impression that 'winning the female' was what the picture was about. The subtext with the knife was always a palpable threat for violence, but that never occurred either except in a marginal sort of way, and it was certainly less than gut-churning.Simply put, it seems that the critical accolades stem from the director's reputation and not on the merits of the picture itself. If there's anything to recommend here it would be the creative cinematography, but it comes with an endurance test of ninety four minutes of waiting for something to happen.

Roman Polanski's debut film takes the psychological thriller and turns it on its head. The setting is an enormous lake, filling the frames with lonely shots of endless water and pitting the three characters against a background of eternal damnation. Juxtaposed with this atmosphere are claustrophobic shots of inside the boat when the three get closer in body but further in mind. Essentially, this is a story pitting man against man with woman watching. What makes is so fascinating is Polanski's ability to shift points of view on a dime to help us understand the entire situation all the way around. It was groundbreaking for its time in communist Poland and it continues to defy the way thrillers are made today. Jazz, water and three people make for a thriller that is thrilling for all the 'wrong' reasons.