Rosemary's Baby

Day 275 - 10/2/09 - Movie #275

BEFORE: A classic film about a young couple moving into a vintage NYC building - so I assume it's mainly about their house-hunting and redecorating, right? Directed by Roman Polanski, who's been in the news this week, for all the wrong reasons...(my boss goes to film festivals all the time, why doesn't somebody arrest him?)

THE PLOT: A young couple move into a new apartment, only to be surrounded by peculiar neighbors and occurrences. When the wife becomes pregnant, paranoia over the safety of her unborn child begins controlling her life.

AFTER: I don't know what exactly happened between Polanski and that teen girl 30 years ago, but the crime I'd like him arrested for is bad pacing. This film is over 2 hours long, and 2/3 of that is a long, slow, boring set up. Rosemary (Mia Farrow) goes to obstetricians, takes vitamins, is told to drink these mysterious beverages (or are they...potions?)

Come on, where's the sexy part of living next to a devil cult? Where are all the young, nubile witches and the blood-soaked orgies? Then, when we finally get to the juicy stuff, it's a bunch of naked senior citizens like Ruth Gordon and Ralph Bellamy! (shudder...) OK, so Mia Farrow was naked in a dream sequence - I bet it was a body double, since her head was out of the frame....

The reason the movie works, though, is that you're never really sure who to believe. Is there really a coven in this posh Manhattan apartment complex? (It's called the Bramford, but the exteriors were obviously shot at the Dakota.) Or is it all in Rosemary's pre-partum imagination, a fascination with witchcraft based on the building's gruesome history? It's nice and ambiguous.

I watched the ending of the film at the office after 5 pm - an animator friend came by to ask my advice about film festivals. (if only Polanski had done the same...) Our conversation reminded me that I've got a good original screenplay idea, based on my life in NYC in the early 90's - I don't want to reveal the idea here, but I've been sitting on it for years and not developing it. Just like Rosemary, I've got to give birth to it and take care of it, even if it turns out to be a demon baby - it's still my baby.

RATING: 6 out of 10 scrabble tiles

SPOOK-O-METER: 3 out of 10 (a little creepy but not outright scary)