A mother and her baby !!!

Rating: 10/10 (14 September 2015)

'Rosemary's Baby' is perhaps the most popular and well known Roman Polanski film after 'Chinatown'. The film is based on a novel of the same name by Ira Levin and it's the 2nd film in Polanski's 'Apartment Trilogy'. The film is about a married couple - Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse who move into the Bramford, a Manhattan apartment. They get introduced to a nosy and odd neighbouring couple - The Castevets who start intruding in their lives a lot. Finally when Rosemary gets pregnant, she starts becoming more and more suspicious about the neighbours as well as her husband.
Polanski had already made 'Repulsion' in 1965 which was the 1st film in his 'Apartment Trilogy' and his 1st film in the English language. But 'Rosemary's Baby' was his first big-budget film and this was also the 1st big-budget Hollywood horror film. But like a true product of its time, it still had the audacity to have ambiguity as one of its qualities unlike the big-budget Hollywood studio productions of the current era. Like 'Repulsion', this film can also be interpreted in many different ways.
The first way to interpret it will be to view it as a work on female liberation. This was made in the 60s when the feminist movement was finally starting to have some impact. One can view the film and opine that Polanski is showing how a woman is being dominated by others and others' opinions are being forced upon her during her pregnancy when all the decisions should rest with her. She starts becoming more and more distant from her husband due to the fact even he fails to understand her mindset and starts dominating her.
The second way to interpret the film will be to take everything literally. The viewer can decide to not go too much into subtexts and themes and take the film for what it is and get immersed in this interesting story of a woman and her pregnancy.
The third way to interpret the film will be to view it as an allegory on how women can seem excessively paranoid and whimsical during pregnancy from a male point of view.
The fourth way to interpret it will be to view the film as the struggle of a woman with a Catholic background to adjust herself to the new and changing society of the 1960s, a decade during which non-conformism and counterculture became a craze. Her paranoia gets the better of her and she begins to fear the prospect of bringing a new child to a world and a society which is straying away from her beliefs and so she tries to distance herself and her unborn baby from all folks that she suspects to have 'questionable' beliefs and faiths.
The beauty of the screenplay written by Polanski himself, is that it facilitates all the interpretations that can be possible. The screenplay is open and provides hints and scopes for viewers to take the film and accept in their own way. I especially loved the ending of the film as I think it is a beautiful tribute to mothers and motherly love.
Another very important aspect of the film is the style of storytelling. Polanski uses surrealism with some dream sequences that are truly weird and effective. Just like 'Repulsion', Polanski blurs the distinctions between what is real and what is being imagined by using a paranoid and sort of unreliable narrator as the whole film is from the point of view of Rosemary who is in pretty much every scene.
Mia Farrow is absolutely brilliant as the titular Rosemary. She looks incredibly gaunt and petite in the film to underline her fragility. She beautifully pulls off the transition from being sweet and gullible to being flat out paranoid. I also loved Ruth Gordon as Minnie Castevet. She richly deserved the Oscar that she won for this role. She is dynamite in every scene she is in. She puts in a method performance so brilliantly that the viewer is always guessing whether to believe her or not.
'Rosemary's Baby' is a very influential horror film. It uses psychological horror to explore deeper themes without resorting to cheap scares, but it still is pretty disturbing. This film is an absolute masterpiece which I can't recommend highly enough.