The Polanski film Death and the Maiden is a wonderful and intelligentinterpretation of Ariel Dorfman’s human rights problem play.
Polanski hasproduced, in this film, an exceptional piece of direction, in which his ownpersonal, emotional input is evident. The main theme of the play is an extremelypersonal one for both playwright (and scriptwriter) and director. Both Dorfmanand Polanski have had to face and flee the horrors of dictatorship and humanrights violations: Dorfman in Chile, under General Augusto Pinochet, andPolanski in Poland under the Nazis. But despite this similarity in pastexperience, significant differences exist between the original play and thefilm. Apart from the specific techniques of lighting and composition, whosepossibilities are greatly widened in the medium of film, we see differences inboth the different emphases and implied viewpoints on the various themes thatthe play touches on and, perhaps more importantly, the way the characters areportrayed.
While the old concept of “whatever doesn’t kill you makes youstronger” is present in both the play and the film (particularly in thecharacterisation of Paulina), it is much more prevalent in the movie. We can seePaulina’s strength from the start. As she strides confidently around the houseand violently tears off a piece of chicken, the suggestion that she is unsuitedto the domestic position which she has obviously been forced into by the sideeffects of her traumatic experience need not be made any clearer. Althoughpossessing remarkable strength in both texts, the movie shows a much stronger,almost completely masculine Paulina. This Paulina has been almost entirelydefeminized by her ordeal, physically, symbolised by the scarred breast and herdesire to “adopt” a child, which also serves as a glimpse of the vulnerableelement of womanhood in her character that still remains.
Throughout the bout ofverbal jousting that goes on in the opening scene Paulina is able to hold herground much more firmly than she appears to do in the play. In Polanski’sversion of the scene she actually manages to use her domestic role to gain powerin the argument, fiercely flinging the dinner in the bin. Weaver’s powerfulacting conveys the unmistakable tension associated with an incredible amount ofsuppressed anger. It is not until the following scenes, when she is finallyconfronted with the cause of that anger, however, that we see its full magnitudeand destructive potential. In the surreal, dim lighting of her bedroom Paulinais shaken by a strangely disturbing laugh upon recognising Roberto Miranda’svoice as that of her tormentor. This moment sees the birth or manifestation ofanother facet of Paulina’s character, the part of Paulina’s mind thatfantasized about doing to her torturers what they had done to her.
This is theunbelievably unreasonable Paulina; she is a Fury, a mythical deity, theembodiment of vengeance, unsusceptible to male logic or opportunistic, careeristrationalisation. Polanski makes Paulina throw the car over the cliff-edge. Indoing this she is not only destroying a phallic symbol, and thus underminingRoberto’s sexuality and any claims he has on sexual dominance or superiority,she is destroying a perfect symbol of the male thirst for power and control, andthe pragmatic logic to which her need for revenge has been sacrificed, into theinfinite, chaotic abyss that defies all these principles, and unquestionablyswallows it up. In doing this she breaks the railing, civilized society hascreated to guard itself from that chaos, allowing those forces of suppressedrage to escape. Polanski’s Paulina re-enters the house, a different person. Illuminated by typically horror-movie-style lighting.
Her sharply focused face? lit by an almost electric blue with harsh shadows cast across it,highlighting her features ? contrasts strongly against the blurry background. Having bound Roberto, she is physically empowered by the gun (P: “. . . as soonas I drop the gun all discussion will cease.
. . you’ll use your strength to winthe argument. . . “) to act aggressively.
The gun is another phallic symbol;hence much of this aggressive behaviour takes on a sexual quality. UnlikeDorfman’s play, Polanski does not try to make us accept, without a struggle,the simple truth that to victimize our tormentors is to sink to their level. Weget the general feeling that Polanski is much more sympathetic to Paulina andthe type of justice her injuries call out for. In Polanski’s film adaptation,far from being driven by blind rage, Paulina is the only character that takesresponsibility for her own actions, and cares little for the self-interestedconsiderations of consequences. She has already faced the worst consequencespossible, and seems, by that experience, to have acquired a terrifyingemancipation from the restraints they can impose. While Dorfman givesGerardo’s logical pragmatism some credence, casting him as the voice ofreason, for Polanski he stands for the blissfully unaware certainty ofprinciples untested by experience.
Gerardo’s clichéd maxims are theluxuries of a man who has never faced the reality of his enemy’s power. However, the film is not a justification of Paulina’s actions, a simplerevenge fantasy. Despite the satisfaction of Paulina’s brand of justice, shecan’t, when faced with Roberto’s honest confession and the fact that he toois human and has his own reasons for doing what he did, push herself to killhim. In fact I am not sure that killing him was her intention when she lead himto the cliff, she understood the almost unbearably painful truth when she firstdecided that “.
. . no revenge [could] satisfy [her]. . .
” For all the ragecontained in the film (significantly more than the play), and its portrayal ofPaulina, there is a certain helplessness to the film, and a disturbing truth inits unresolved ending. One might argue that Polanski ? in making Roberto givean overall much more genuine confession at the end of the film than Dorfmanprovides in the play ? is falling into the Hollywood trap of offering a simpleresolution to its many moral conflicts and thus making it accessible to a wideraudience. I believe this circumstance serves a very important purpose,emphasized by its juxtaposition with the very last scene. It underlines thisimportant impotence in the film’s ending: the fact that despite her havingfaced her demons Paulina has been permanently changed by her ordeal. Andalthough she may have “.
. . reclaimed [her] Schubert. . .
” in that she can nowsit in a concert hall and listen to the music, the music will never be able totell her the same things again. And even if Roberto is not there in person (ashe is in the final scene) he will always exist as a vague presence, a”phantasmagorical” shadow on her soul.
