Attempt to escape. “Knife in the Water” by Roman Polanski

Abstract

Ultimately, the main subject of research for a person is himself. Anthropology is the basic content of philosophy and the implicit premise of science. At the same time, a person explores himself and publishes the results of the research not only with the help of rational reasoning and a logically organized verbal text, but also through artistic, including visual, narratives. One of the most popular forms of art is cinema. At the same time, cinema has long been one of the most effective tools of anthropological knowledge. Roman Polanski’s film ‘Knife in the Water’ is one of the many artistic illustrations of the idea that moving in geographic space is not a possibility for escaping from oneself. People remain the same, even moving from one physical place (city) to another (nature), since their space is always organized around themselves and, moreover, by themselves. During the journey, the characters of the film maintain their relationships and positions that have developed in everyday life. Geographic movement can be accompanied by existential immobility, as evidenced by examples that we can find in the history of the world literature and philosophy. Roman Polanski’s film continues the above semantic line in a peculiar way and thus is an artistic contribution to philosophical anthropology.