Thread Duty:
For perhaps not quite a week, I have had the Blu ray edition of Rosemary’s Baby waiting around, while I in turn waited to be ready to watch. Fact is, I was powerfully impressed by the creepiness, when I watched on DVD (oh – I forget how long ago). And that reinforced the unease which is the now-distant memory of partially watching a TV broadcast, LONG ago.
So, why – assuming for the purpose of discussion that I am not a glutton for punishment – did I want to watch again? To relive the suffering?
First, in the interval I have watched Chinatown, which is beautiful and a magnificent achievement. And it set me to recollecting my experience of the Baby, and I started to sift what it was that I saw, from the emotional trip I was sent on. And I had to own that R’s B was, likewise, beautiful and a magnificent achievement, and I wanted to watch it again, for that reason. I also realized via hindsight, that there is quite a bit of wry humor at play in the movie, with perceiving which, my preoccupation with The Creepy interfered.
Second, as I think I have noted here before, I am quite a fan of Alien, and can now watch it again and again without jumping out of my skin (which was certainly my experience in the cinema when I first saw it). So I felt speculatively confident that, watching R’s Baby again, I would smile more than I did on previous viewings. (And yes, smiling at all would be “more.”)
The experiment, I can report, was a complete success. I watched without becoming embroiled in the unease, but fully appreciating it from an emotional remove. There was also, of course, the inevitable appreciation of two dozen details which escape you when watching a rich film only once. Among these, the score – I love it when the storytelling is so engrossing that I am not conscious of the music, which is also partly the composer’s art.
So, what can I say? If you can bear it, I heartily recommend watching this, again.