Smile and The Blue Ball also faced harsh critique. A well-thought-out visual concept was recognised but the poor anecdotal material was criticised. Kijowicz’s creative method was not understood in these cases – he makes the viewer focus primarily on the monotony of repetitions, as well as on the greyness and ordinariness of the protagonist – a schematic human being with no distinctive features. Music also played a huge role in his films, especially the jazz compositions by Krzysztof Komeda-Trzciński.
A. Kossakowski divided Kijowciz’s art into two categories: ‘epic’ and ‘spectacular-theatrical’. The former films are, in his opinion: ‘uniform stories with a philosophical punchline, whose action, unfolding very slowly, gives the viewer time to think’. There are no gags here, the story moves with a slow pace, without sudden turns. ‘The intended monotony of repeating themes serves to intensify the mood, and the drama is built not on the principle of tensions, but primarily by adding and multiplying similarities.’ This category includes The City, Portraits, Banner, Smile, Roundabout, Cages, Wicker Basket, The Blue Ball, Road and The Mill. The spectacular-theatrical category includes the musical ballet Arlekin, or rather its three versions (including the first amateurish one) and films which the director himself described as animated sketches, i.e. Cabaret, Laterna Magica, Miniatures and Panopticum.
This division, while acceptable, can be slightly modified, because among the films listed as epic what draws attention is the presence of images that are very modest in terms of form and, by definition, monotonous in terms of the plot, such as Smile, The Blue Ball or Road. Then there are films which have a rich anecdotal and visual layer (modelled after Borowczyk or Lenica), such as Banner or The City. Although this division is primarily formal, the director was very consistent in his pursuit of parable, philosophical generalisation and sociological, existential or political observation. Even in the utility film Variants, we are dealing with a parable about creative search, about civilisation and nature, and about a man who has to find some kind of modus vivendi on the intersection of the two. An author writing under the nickname ‘ep’ wrote in Magazyn Filmowy 19/1971 that Variants ‘are above all a beautiful poetic metaphor about man’s eternal quest for beauty and perfection’.
There is one important thing that needs to be stressed at this point. As in the case of Lenica, Kijowicz’s films were influenced by his biography. He could not accept a life in a cage – an existence in Poland under the communist regime, a country belonging to the so-called socialist bloc. The existential positions of the protagonists of his films result from the situation of both the creator and the viewers he addressed at the time. We will find almost nothing on this subject in film critique of the era, which spoke about involvement, stigmatisation of human flaws, etc., instead of emphasising the general theme of the work. This kind of language was the effect of political censorship. The director himself also did not pay attention to this layer of his films in his statements. Today, however, it must be emphasised that it was a defiant – though not ad hoc – form of art which spoke about an individual and the world with which that individual came into – most often unequal – contact. Kijowicz’s art spoke about a world which tried to change and subjugate it. It also spoke about the individual who tried to defend himself, like the protagonist of Cages, who tried to use elements he had access to for creating a composition of flowers growing in another world. On the website of Łódź Film School, we can read:
In his simple films, Mirosław Kijowicz consistently returned to one topic: the attitude of the individual towards the system. Sometimes he is a carefree participant in a political demonstration ('Banner'), sometimes a slave of his master ('The Mill'), and other times a puppet into which its creator breathed life ('Wicker Basket').
Cages were also interpreted similarly:
The film’s greatness was determined by […] the punchline, showing the illusory nature of any power. The one who thinks he wields it – is he really free?
Ivan Lakatos (Filmowy Serwis Prasowy 5/1965) called Banner a masterpiece. But the same can be said of several other films by Kijowicz. Kossakowski mentioned The City, Cages and Wicker Basket as the most valuable. One could also include the simple and modest Road among Kijowicz’s best works, as well as The Mill – completely different from the aforementioned because of its complex plot. Kazimierz Żórawski (Film 47/1972) named Kijowicz one of the most outstanding animated film directors – not only in Poland. He saw him as one of the main figures of the Polish animation school and a continuator of Borowczyk, Lenica, and Szczechura’s artistic ideas. In the catalogue issued on the occasion of a retrospective of Kijowicz’s films at the Kraków Film Festival in 2000, Jerzy Armata wrote that Mirosław Kijowicz proved with his films that ‘Visuals brought to life […] can be true art’.