Review of Chinatown DVD

Everyone knows this is a great movie; I mean a movie has to be some kind of good to be nominated by the Academy Awards 11 times in a range of categories and to have won for Best Original Screenplay. Still, I didn't know what to expect when I finally sat down to watch this famous film, but two things stuck out to me about Chinatown.

One startling feature was the constant threat of violence and sexuality. The threat of violence is an easy enough concept and is clear enough in the movie; indeed, Jake is constantly being attacked by thugs, random guy in a barber shop (verbally), farmers in Oakland, more thugs, even cops. And it's not a little violence. Jake is repeatedly beaten, even sliced up a little; however, the threat of sexuality is perhaps a more difficult concept. What I mean is the sexuality in the movie gets people in serious trouble. The movie opens with a husband seeing pictures of his wife's infidelity, whom he later batters a bit, and ends with the pedophiliac, incestuous rapist getting a new daughter and the threat looms over her thin body and shrill shrieks deepens the tragedy that lays bloodied behind the wheel of the car, and that doesn't include all the stuff in between the opening and closing acts, which are many, grotesque at times, and sometimes deadly.

The other thing that struck me about this movie, is that in this atmosphere of death and sex the characters take on rather surrealistic, almost archetypal qualities. Now seeing archetypes in a movie or literature or what have you, is easy enough, but it's not always appropriate. Rather, some works lend themselves to such analysis more readily than others, and Chinatown is one such movie. The most obvious reason for such a 'reading' of Chinatown is the plot. Jake is clearly in a cycle; he's repeating actions of the past with the same outcomes no matter how hard he tries to change them. Along those lines, it's telling Robert Towne, the writer, never let's us know exactly what happened in Jake's past regarding that cryptic invocation repeated several times, "Chinatown." It's simply a place where something bad happened to someone Jake loved, whom he thought he could save, which seems specific, but when the events repeat themselves again, in Chinatown, without clarification of the original event, I begin to suspect there is a deeper text going on. Polanski being a bright fellow picks up on this and brings it into the forefront by adding film noir elements to the filming. One scene in particular stands out. Jake returns to the place where Mr. Mulway's body was found. It's night and the place is locked-up, so Jake jumps the fence. Then Jake is almost washed out to sea when the dam is released in a culvert where Jake is standing. Escaping drowning, Jake is attacked by two thugs who appear out of the darkness, where Polanski makes a cameo as the short thug. The darkness, the silence, the drowning, the appearance of tormentors, all lend themselves to a deeper reading of this movie, especially since these elements repeat themselves again throughout; indeed, thugs seem to appear from nowhere whenever needed, which isn't poor plot construction making people wonder "Where did those guys come from?" because in this world thugs, violence, and death can and will appear at the slightest provocation, and Jake has provoked the ire of the ruler of Hades. Noah Cross runs this world, and Jake's pitiful attempt to trap him at the end of the movie, only lets Cross get what he wants while Jake again fails to protect his charge, highlighting Jake's ineffectiveness to change anything in Chinatown. Thus, it seems Chinatown is a kind of hell, representing to Jake Gittes a world in which his choices continuously turn to destruction and worse deliver that which he loves to men he loathes, a world in which the powerless remain exploited, and the powerful never fear justice.