Echo

Warsaw became really hot in 1964: Kabaret Starszych Panów (Elderly Gentlemen’s Cabaret) led by Kazimierz Kutz had to face the heat, while Henryk (Wieńczysław Gliński), the main protagonist of Różewicz’s film, during these pleasant summer months had to face the fever of lustration. Almost 20 years after the war he is accused of collaborating with the Gestapo, and the accusations echo not only in his surroundings, but most of all in his own head.

This masterful film, with Jerzy Wójcik’s Kafkaesque cinematography, brings to mind the best noir narratives. The Różewicz brothers center on a man who is both insufferable and self-aggrandizing. The more painful is his fall on the background of the monumental socialist architecture of Warsaw. Just as in Kawalerowicz’s Shadow, the echo of the past never fades: it’s sinister and ready to attack.

Patrycja Mucha