Joseph enter the sanatorium where his father is being held. Close to death, the father is confused and Joseph wants to spend these last few hours with him. When he arrives at the sanatorium however he finds it a hallucinatory place of pain and history. At times magical, others nightmarish. The sanatorium becomes the driver of his revisiting personal history. He meets old friends, girlfriend and lovers. Travels into the checked past of Polish history. Through wars and wastelands, puppet shows and plastic people into archways made of marble. The past is a terrible place but maybe it is also able to teach us of our present? It is here that Joseph will find his father but also might find out more than he wished to about himself.

I was spell bound by the utter majesty of this film. By challenging the visual field to tell a complex and compelling story. The use of vision and the composition of a shot to impart narrative and meaning though not new, is reminiscent of silent film. This captures the minds and eyes of great film makers across generations. It tells the story by immersing us in an event and then playing around with the form of it. That is simply to say we cross space and time visually and not via verbal or audio clues. An illustration is required. The shot is at a wall in a dilapidated house and as the character climbs over said wall, they are in a jungle. We have crossed space and time within a single cut. This might not sound like much but within the bounds of the space and the time it is accepted. The film has convinced us that the space deserves to be outside of any physical laws of time and space. Imagine all that conveyed via the use of an edit and a shot. Amazing in the simple and clever way it communicates the idea and executes the move.

Wait there is so much more. Visually as well the film is so rich and deeply submerged. We have rooms filled with motifs, images, clues and clutter. They make the image so much fun to read and absorb but also so much fun to understand the passage through them. You ask about the boat, the ballroom, the  despaired hospital. All have a place in the world and all feel interesting and unique. I love the way form is almost pushed to breaking point by the introduction of a dead body and a piano. A plastic person and a river boat in a swamp. The fish eyed lens gives life to all this so much so. It might actually be a 70mm lens but it is vast and the space needs it! You have at this films very core, modern cinema at play. The art direction is astounding and so is the production. This is a masterwork and within this film is a very primary thing. The reason cinema is magical…

The Transfer is actually really very nice, though 1080p draws some of the colour away from the more impressive framing and exterior sets. Add to this the lack of extras and some might be put off!