Performance by Paul Buck

Author:Paul Buck [BUCK, PAUL]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-85712-791-4
Publisher: Music Sales Limited
Published: 2012-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

10) nothing is as it seems (2)

CHAS enters Powis Square accompanied by Ry Cooder’s blues playing on the soundtrack. The idea seems to be that the location, in the heart of Notting Hill, is an area where black people live, mainly West Indians, alongside others who can’t afford more than these poor, rundown conditions. In the few shots we see outside the house, the black presence is shown on the peripheries. We have seen already a black showgirl in the wings at the club, a black garage attendant watching at the car hire firm. And we have seen that Noel has his place, in the basement. Though the film is about violence, and though Notting Hill had underlying racial tensions at the time, this is allowed to lie dormant for the time being.

Only when we step inside the house – with the faded gloom of its retired and reclusive rock star, Turner, whose finances are starting to dwindle – do we see the truth of the black situation. Not only has Turner made his money exploiting black music, but also he has kept a black musician as a pet in the basement. At least that is how it comes across. And if you don’t like that image, try “my son”, the term Noel uses when recounting his story about Turner to his mother. Soon we will hear the racial tension boil; soon we will be awoken by The Last Poets. But will it be treated as real or faux rage?

Chas is dropped off by taxi and walks towards 81. This is not the real number and the address is only used for its façade. Chas is about to step through the looking glass, to go into the mirror. And as he does so the film splits in two. When he enters this new world, though not ‘the New World’ that Dennis had talked up, despite nominal contact with the outside world, there is little evidence that this will be a thriller, that the ‘chaps’ who work for Harry Flowers, the media or the police are looking for Chas, and closing in. The world he steps into is outside time. It’s as if the clock will stay still when the outside world is excluded. (Further, the idea of Cocteau’s world through the mirror in Orphée resonates.) There is no television, no hint of radio, not even a telephone “up ‘ere”. The only contact is via the payphone in the basement that Noel used. Other requirements can be brought in by Mrs Gibbs and Lorraine, the daily cleaner and her daughter.

Polanski was one of Donald’s friends in Paris. Just as Repulsion had impressed itself on Donald, so Polanski’s subsequent film can be seen as having a bearing. Cul-de-sac (1966) is primarily about two gangsters, one injured, on the run after a bungled robbery, who find their way to the isolated home of a reclusive and effeminate man and his attractive young French wife. These two gangsters would seem to be successors of Gus and Ben from Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter, and Goldberg and McCann from The Birthday Party.

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