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Iluminacja
Illumination
Poland 1973
produced by Film Polski
directed by Krysztof Zanussi
starring Stanislaw Latallo, Malgorzata Pritulak, Monika Dzienisiewicz-Olbrychska, Edward Zebrowski, Jan Stonicki, Anna Horecka, Jadwiga Colonna-Walewska, Wlodzimierz Zonn, Wlodzimierz Zawadzki, Iwo Birula-Bialynicki, Marcin Latallo, Andrzej Mellin, Bogdan Mielnik, Jerzy Mycielski, Sylwester Porowski, Michal Tarkowski, Wladyslaw Tatarkiewicz, Lukasz Turski, Ryszard Wachowski, Joanna Zólkowska
written by Krysztof Zanussi, music by Wojciech Kilar
review by Mike Haberfelner
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This is the story of Franciszek Retman (Stanislaw Latallo), who has
discovered his fascination for physics in high-school and afterwards went
studying to be a physicist at university. But as it goes, Frnaciszek meets
Malgorzata (Malgorzata Pritulak), and before you know it, they fall in
love, marry, he gets her pregnant ... and suddenly Franciszek realizes he
needs to earn money to feed his wife and child, so he has himself
suspended from university and takes a job at a factory - but soon he
realizes how factory work wrecks him, so he has himself fired and leaves
his wife and child, to work at a mental clinic, first as a guinea pig,
then as a helping hand ... but when he makes friends with a few of the
patients and sees them dieing, he realizes he has to quit this job too.
He next tries himself out as a hermit, as an alcoholic, and he even
contemplates suicide ... but eventually he realizes he has to return to
his family to find happiness - and is even taken back by his wife who is
at first more than reluctant to even talk to him -, end eventually he
picks up studying again, and eventually earns a diploma and starts
teaching at the university.
It now seems Franciszek has it all, until a doctor tells him he hasn't
only got it all, he also has a serious heart condition ...
The style of filmmaking of Illumination might be much more
fascinating than the film itself: Especially the first half hour is made
up entirely of associative images and scenes that only gradually begin to
make sense and slowly begin to form a story (that of Franciszek's early
career). After a while this technique is subdued - not abandoned -, giving
way to a more traditional form of storytelling, with only the occasional
drift-off into associations. What keeps the film from becoming the
masterpiece it should have been though is a rather dull script that tells
a way too conventional story that seems to go nowhere in particular and
thus ends at a seemingly deliberately chosen point in the script - which
makes one ask why didn't it end sooner or why didn't it go on ? ... and
that's not a good thing.
A pity, because parts of the film are nothing short of fascinating.
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