FILM CHALLENGE: 59) Chinatown

59) Chinatown

Director: Roman Polanski

Year: 1974

Plot Summary: Jake Gittes is a private detective who seems to specialize in matrimonial cases. He is hired by Evelyn Mulwray when she suspects her husband Hollis, builder of the city's water supply system, of having an affair. Gittes does what he does best and photographs him with a young girl. But in the ensuing scandal, it seems he was hired by an impersonator and not the real Mrs. Mulwray. When Hollis Mulwray is found dead, Jake is plunged into a complex web of deceit involving murder, incest and municipal corruption all related to the city's water supply.

Never has a crime movie been so close to perfection.

Chinatown is a film about corruption through and through. Polanski suggests here that the very notion of an honest, trustworthy leader is a myth. People in positions of power are never what they seem to be in Chinatown and their true nature is always harmful to the people beneath them. Take Noah Cross for example – played amazingly by the legendary John Huston – who essentially runs most of Los Angeles and the outlying areas. He uses the people he controls as pawns for his personal gain. Moreover, the district attorney is infamous for his instruction that the police ignore any crime that is committed. Even Lieutenant Escobar, a man whom the main character, Jake, has worked with and respects, is willing to let injustice occur without punishing the people who brought it to pass.

However, unlike recent Hollywood crime films that deal with the theme of corruption such as State Of Play and L.A. Confidential, Polanski doesn’t surcome to the naïve idea that everything that is dishonest will eventually be uncovered and exposed. Here, no matter how good a character is or how noble his or her intentions are, the director presents how impossible it is for common people to overcome or escape the corruption that is happening around them. Evelyn, despite her money and earlier flight from her father, for example, proves unable to run far or fast enough to escape death in the gut-punching finale. And even Hollis, who tried to free himself from evil by cutting ties to Cross, nevertheless loses his life to his former business associate.

But it’s not just a movie about how unstoppable corruption is. It also presents how common it is in America despite people’s ignorance. Jake tells himself, for example, that corruption is confined to just one area - years before, he lost a woman to evil forces in Chinatown - but, at the end of the movie, he also loses Evelyn in nearly the exact same manner. Chinatown, therefore, serves as a symbol for how, in spite what people may believe, corruption occurs in every US city. Jake describes it early in the narrative as a place where secret organizations rule, the law is meaningless and good intentions are brutally suppressed. Corruption not only exists here but has become so much a part of the way societies work that even good men like Lieutenant Escobar do not attempt to fight it. As the film reaches its climax though, Jake discovers that it’s not just Chinatown that’s like this. All of America is.

This ignorance about how dishonest the country really is can be seen, moreover, through some of the actions of characters in Chinatown. In many cases, people claim ignorance of the corruption surrounding them such as when Evelyn pretends to know nothing about the woman her husband is seeing, in the process keeping information from Jake that may have saved her life. Ida Sessions also professes her ignorance to the full scope of the crime she helped commit and therefore cannot see that she is in deep enough to be murdered. Even Jake naïvely tells Evelyn all the end of the movie to “let the police handle” it, only to discover that the way they handle it is to kill Evelyn.

The bandage on Jake’s face also symbolically presents the realistic, cynical approach to the theme of corruption. While in the likes of the aforementioned L.A. Confidential, Ed Exley walks away from a shoot out with a hit squad without a single mark on his face, Jake’s struggle with corruption leaves him damaged and broken within the first 30 minutes of the movie.

Presenting just how unstoppable and how common corruption is in America still isn’t enough for Roman Polanski though: He also attempts to show the reasons why it exists so much in their society. In Chinatown, the director suggests that it comes hand in hand with the American Dream. One basic element of the ideal is that common people can move into unclaimed wilderness and transform it into valuable land. Hollis Mulwray did this in the movie by using water to help turn Los Angeles from a wasted patch of desert into an ever-growing metropolis. Cross, however, turns this approach into an excuse for murder, killing Hollis when he interferes with Cross’s plans for the new reservoir and steals the most valuable of resources from the struggling farmers, pushing them into bankruptcy in an attempt to further line the pockets of his already rich associates.

Analysis aside, Chinatown is one of the finest films that has ever been written and directed. Polanski proves exactly why he is so well adored in the industry here with his simple yet haunting directorial style, the music is some of the most perfect that you'll find in a motion picture, the cinematography is stunning and the performances from Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway and, of course, John Huston are some of the actors' very best.

Essential viewing. A masterpiece on all counts.

5/5

By Daniel Sarath with 5 comments