Day 1 - Repulsion

Repulsion (1965) directed by Roman Polanski

What do you get when you cross Psycho, Black Swan and a director of questionable morals when regarding young helpless girls? (That's right, I went there.) You get one of the most terrifying and disturbing looks into mental breakdown and psychosis captured on film. Rather than compete with the dozens of professionally written reviews and plot summaries you can find on the Internet, I will instead tell you what I liked about the movie, rape, murder and rotting meat. Delicious. 

When you think of the phrase "well crafted movie" what comes to mind? I'm not being rhetorical, I'm seriously asking because I'm trying to avoid using cliches without actually knowing what they mean. Part of the reason to watch all these movies isn't to simply critique and review movies, but to improve my own understanding of them. So when I think of well crafted, I think of a movie like Repulsion for different reasons. The story/plot is well crafted in that it starts off slowly to build character and to set the mood and then, WHAM! (see my masterful command of the English language?) it hits you with a nail-biting look into Carole's slip into dementia. The first 30 minutes of this movie can be painstakingly slow, but it is not necessarily boring as there are enough interesting moments to keep you watching. The world around Carole, from her awkward interactions with men to noticing a crack in the sidewalk, are all transposed onto her apartment which manifests itself into Carole's warped sense of reality. The cracks she notices on the sidewalk outside suddenly appear in the walls of the apartment and they get bigger the more she "cracks." Yes, I figured that one out on my own. The hallway literally attacks her and there is no difference between the real life people that come to see her and her imagined ones that come in to haunt her. Repulsion is also well-crafted with its unique camera shots. Rather than centering his subjects in the frame and making quick cuts to follow action, Polanski instead uses off centered shots that slowly pan rather than jump. This seems to be the more old-school approach to film making as I almost never see it in modern films but I find it refreshing and unique. It is certainly more artsy, even if I don't understand what he is trying to say by doing it.

So that is my basic sense what well-crafted means, good storytelling and being well-shot (which is still a pretty ambiguous term to me), which Repulsion has both of. Anything else I'm missing?

Grade: A-