The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, August 10-16
Directed by Tadeusz Konwicki
“I’m going to kill a man in 86 minutes.” Exclaiming his intentions, the first words of the film, while revealing an automatic pistol under his overcoat, our protagonist does not inform us that the next 86 minutes will be one of the most time-confounding experiences in filmic history. Declared as “a journey to the future which will reflect the past,” this is more like a mystery fever-dream, a memory unpeeling layers of regret, longing, love, and grief. The man is visited by, and encounters, lost lovers, fellow partisans, his dead father, a friend who committed suicide, and trailing ghosts of the war, amongst others. These memory-fantasy introspections, soaked in Poland’s post-war confusion, fear, and dogma, plays out as an epic, symbolic autobiographical search for the answers of life. Whether at a seemingly everlasting party packed with dancing bodies, or on a film set within the film investigating death, the film is exquisitely shot with uncompromising repetitive zooms, pans, and close-ups, not to mention a haunting, groaning score, further escalating the urgency of this expansive search for identity and meaning. Samuel T. Adams (August 11, 15, 7:30pm; August 20, 10pm at the Spectacle’s Konwicki series)