11. Clocks &..

Lyrics

The lights go out and I can't be saved
Tides that I tried to swim against
Have brought me down upon my knees
Oh I beg, I beg and plead, singing

Come out of the things unsaid
Shoot an apple off my head and a
Trouble that can't be named
A tiger's waiting to be tamed, singing

You are, you are

Confusion that never stops
The closing walls and the ticking clocks gonna
Come back and take you home
I could not stop, that you now know, singing

Come out upon my seas
Cursed missed opportunities am I
A part of the cure
Or am I part of the disease, singing

You are, you are
You are, you are
You are, you are

And nothing else compares
And nothing else compares
And nothing else compares

You are, you are

Home, home, where I wanted to go
Home, home, where I wanted to go
Home, home, where I wanted to go (You are)
Home, home, where I wanted to go (You are)


Clocks is a fairly enjoyable song, just like most other songs by Coldplay. I am a bit surprised how this song is so high and even more surprised why Coldplay is considered to be a great band. I don't really see what's so special about any of their songs. Lyrically, this is a very vague song, and I had no idea how to make a really logical link between the song and a movie. The clip doesn't help either. All we see is Coldplay performing. But I remembered seeing a clip once from a movie by Roman Polanski in which the walls were closing in on Catherine Deneuve. Besides, I thought, it looks like a movie that might be just as vague as the song So I chose that film. While the movie isn't vague it turned out to be a better fit then I expected. It is about madness and it can be argued that the song also is about someone going, at least slightly, mad.

The Movie: Repulsion (Roman Polanski, 1965)

After The Shining this is already the second movie I discuss that deals with the subject of madness. And in both movies the characters going mad are stuck in a confined space. In The Shining it was a hotel, here it is the apartment of Carole's (Catherine Deneuve) sister. I think that The Shining is a much better and more entertaining film with more virtuoso film making. But it is Repulsion that gives, I believe, a more realistic and more terrifying representation of madness. While in The Shining there was a supernatural reason for Jack to lose his mind, there is nothing supernatural in Repulsion. Carole lives among ordinary people with ordinary jobs who worry about ordinary things. There is no reason for her madness. She is losing her mind, simply because sometimes that happens to some people. At the end of the movie a hint is given for her madness, but it is still a pretty ambiguous hint.

It is clear from the start that Carole is not completely sane. She is repulsed by men and sex. She is kind of dating someone, but she hardly ever shows up to their appointments and is disgusted and unresponsive when he tries to kiss her. She always seems unsure of herself and completely insecure. Many European directors in the 1960's seemed to love to film scenes of women walking through the city, set to jazz/rock music. Polanski does that here too, but these scenes are not pointless. They serve to show how utterly terrified Carole is of the society around her. At the beginning she is still at least functional though. She has a job as a manicure in a beauty salon and has some sort of relationship with her colleagues and her sister with whom she lives. But when her sister leaves on a holiday with her boyfriend, Carole has to stay alone in the apartment and that's when she completely loses it. One can imagine that Carole is not an easy character to play. She doesn't have much dialogue and a lot of the time she is alone. Deneuve does a great job though.

Polanski manages to create suspense and terror by doing very simple things. In the first half of the movie we get a very clear sense of the geography of the apartment. We know how big each room is and how to get to each room. In the second half Polanski simply distorts the space in the apartment. Sometimes he films in such a way that rooms and halls seem larger then they are, and sometimes smaller. But even more impressive is his use of sound. While I have never gone insane, I have obviously been home alone. And when you are home alone you are more aware of sounds around you. A surprising sound can startle even a mentally stable person. The most scary sequence in this film is a short one in which practically nothing happens. Carole has heard a sound which has scared her and now she sits still in bed waiting to hear it again. We don't hear anything either, just wait for something to happen while Carole becomes more and more terrified and eventually hallucinates. I also don't remember seeing a film in which you heard so often the ringing of the telephone or the doorbell. For Carole this sound is extra terrifying. Not just because it is so startling and unexpected, but because it is an intrusion in her personal space. The ringing of a doorbell or a telephone means that a person wants to see you or talk to you. For Carole this has become a terrifying thought. She kills the two people to enter her apartment.