20 February 2011

Grzegorz Cisiecki's short film Dym (Smoke)

There's obviously a limit to what a film can say in a little over seven minutes, although Grzegorz Cisiecki's film Dym (Smoke) manages to say a great deal without a single word. This Polish movie was made in 2007 and is described as 'The story of the person who became the captive of surrealistic madness.'

The film begins with moving clouds, continues to a shirtless young man looking out the window from his rather bare room, where he then moves and sits at a table with a tape recorder, which seems to trigger memories - a car, a mysterious man, a woman the young man is obviously intimate with, a series of images, blood, masks, sounds suggesting something sinister - and the ending returns us to the young man at the table with the tape machine and the woman at the window, then clouds again.

The central part has no apparent linearity, only a series of images with intimations of sexuality, violence, psychosis, infidelity, above all mystery: it is a short movie which moves by suggestion, with often foreboding surreal overtones. How much is dream, nightmare, past, future? It is extremely effective and relies heavily upon music and other sound effects to convey additional atmosphere where words are
lacking, if not redundant. Very powerful and very watchable, with occasional suggestions of David Lynch, and Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut.

This is well worth viewing: Dym (Smoke)

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