Another one of the greatest films I've ever seen that took me completely by surprise. It's an English drama (directed by Joseph Losey, a filmmaker I'm increasingly growing in awe of with every film of his I see) with a screenplay by the great Harold Pinter about the relationship between a servant and his master. It starts off in the avenues you would expect, examining class struggle and domestic tension but it keeps going in unexpected directions, pulling the rug out from under the viewer 4 or 5 times without ever relying on something as blatant as a plot twist. The final 15 or so minutes, in particular, take the film into territory much weirder and more complex than you'd ever expect.
It's also one of the best directed films I've ever seen. Almost the entire film takes place in a single house, with four characters, so you would expect it feel stagey, but Losey's camera never stops moving, constantly shifting which character has dominance in the frame, to reflect the constant shifting of power in their relationships. It's a story where so much has to be read between the lines, and so most of the actual storytelling is done with the camera, not the script. Every choice Losey makes feels right and the whole film feels vital and energetic, when it could have so easily have been staid and academic.
It's an utterly masterful film, surely one of the greatest ever made. It's not easy to find (Amazon has a no-region Asian release listed, but who knows what quality that is) but if you ever get a chance to see this, you should take it.
