Roman Polanski's The Tenant

[Doc Faustus]

Here is the deal with the Tenant. It's a piece about conformity, madness and how cities are driving people insane. The main character is pressured to be someone he isn't, to the point in which he has to be that person. And that person was driven mad by the buildings expectations of her. Social expectations deprive people of selfhood and it's a big concern of Polanski's. Look at the cultish behavior in Rosemary's Baby for example and how everyone is part of it. Being a survivor of the Nazi regime, Polanski is terrified of how a whole culture can mobilize against people for being different and this is what the Tenant is about. My problem with the Tenant is the pacing and how for somebody so obsessed with conveying a message, he doesn't spit it out. And the fact that with Rosemary's Baby, he'd already fleshed out the themes in a much more approachable way. The Tenant is an outsider showing how horrifying the inside is. A lot like Lynch does with Hollywood in Mulholland Drive.