Knife In The Water Movie Review:


His 10th films as a director, this is the one that kicked Polanski into the international spotlight. This is a masterpiece of style and economy--a complex and delicately balanced tale with only three characters and one small set. And it's so inventively filmed and edited that the imagery and themes have been borrowed by many filmmakers over the years (Phillip Noyce's Dead Calm and Adrian Lyne's Unfaithful are two obvious examples).

The plot is deceptively simple: Andrzej and Krystyna (Niemczyk and Umecka) have drifted into comfortable but not very passionate marriage. As they're heading off for a weekend on their sailboat, they encounter a 19-year-old hitchhiker (Malanowicz) who strikes a chord with both of them. Krystyna is attracted to this handsome young man, while Andrzej is stimulated by his youthful bravado. On a whim, they invite him onto the boat, and what follows is a subtle game of one-upmanship between the boy and Andrzej, while Krystina pretends to look on impassively. The tension builds steadily to a sudden rumble of violence that changes everything.

With gorgeous grey-scale cinematography by Jerzy Lipman, Polanski films the slow-burning action brilliantly, keeping all three characters in the frame no matter how they're configured on the boat, in the water, wherever. This softly evokes the shifts in power between the trio, allowing their superbly shaded performances to take on additional meaning. This is so expertly done that it still exhilarates 40 years later (helped by the pristine restored print). It hardly matters that the film is elusive and muted, and perhaps too packed with meaning.

This is both a gripping romantic thriller and a searing examination of the friction between experience and childishness--themes as potent today as they ever were. And the Soviet Poland setting is perhaps more eerily telling now than when the film was made, as it takes a sideways look at government inequity and rootless youth. It's to the filmmakers' credit that we find it hard to take sides; we merely want the situation to work out in some way. And the conclusion brilliantly captures this internal conflict in the viewer. Essential!

Rich Cline

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