Photon's screen time is dominated by CGI, whose creation drained the lion's share of the film's several-years-long development process. Although they portray the current state of science knowledge in the most faithful way possible, they are not devoid of stipulation and fantasy. This is how Leto describes his consultations with physicists:
[…] how a visual artist, wanting to depict everything, is supposed to talk with a physicist thinking in formulas? For example: they explained to me the shift of the electron's spin. 'Okay, but how does it all look like?', I asked, to which they replied: 'We don’t understand the question'. 'Well, how am I supposed to depict it in the film?', 'Oh, you can depict it however you like, it doesn’t look like anything at all'.
In those few cases, objective processes are visualized on certain examples, thus perturbing the narrative's academic style and introducing an emotional note. From time to time, the inclusions are subtle, like when the narrator explains how friction works using the example of a shopping bag putting strain on a finger. We then see a scene starring only Leto, returning home from shopping and opening the door of the house known from his previous film Sailor. Another scene depicts Wojciech Bąkowski – a visual artist, musician and poet – while writing a poem on the tram. Aside from such nods, Leto also allows himself to introduce more personal inclusions.
When explaining genetical processes, he also shows what happens when disorders appear on the molecular level. When Leto describes how the Parkinson's disease works, he describes it on a concrete example. One which is not coincidental – Stanisław, the man afflicted by Parkinson's disease, the one we have seen in the opening scene, is the artist's father. In the film, he is the father of the protagonist (who, in part, is the film author's alter ego). The camera accompanies Stanisław around his house and in the garden, peeks at him during his everyday actions which become more and more difficult for the diseased man. The way the character is filmed is contrasted with the down-to-earth explanation of the disease's nature. Unlike the static interview scenes, it is full of close-ups and shots made by hand, which formally puts it close to Dogma 95 films. Ultimately, this segment became the artist's farewell to his father who died before the premiere of the film's final cut.
In its final phase, Photon strides into the domain of science fiction. The scientist, pressured by the journalist, begins to speculate about the future. It seems quite conventional at first: the usual elements of most of the futurological visions are in place as he speaks of metropolises dotted with skyscrapers and filled with flying cars. The more we move into the future, however, the less Leto's depiction of the future resembles our current times (just dressed in the costume of futuristic technology). In the optimistic scenario, humanity manages to resolve the issue of global social inequality, but it is still thanks to technology.
Over time, the Internet – the narrator speculates – will permeate the reality to such degree that it will become a necessity, just like air. Gradually more and more people will give up their physical bodies to transfer their consciousness into a new, more advanced virtual reality with servers operated by autonomous machines. The last men clinging to their physical shells will live 'as Aborigines did'. In this aspect, Leto's vision of the future is similar to the one depicted in Stanisław Lem's Fiasco. From The Invincible – another novel by the Polish writer – he seems to borrow the vision of autonomous machines which begin to undergo evolution in the manner of biological organisms. Such vision of the future, dominated by technology to the point where humans renounces their bodies to become part of a separate organism, a self-sufficient network, is usually depicted in pop culture as dystopian, one example being The Matrix. Leto avoids being judgmental. Just like life itself and the laws that govern it – it is neither bad nor good, it simply exists.
- Photon. Scenario and directing: Norman Leto, cinematography: Michał Marczak, music: Przemysław Wierzbicki, Przemysław Książek, Igor Szulc, montage: Norman Leto. Starring: Andrzej Chyra, Danuta Banach, Kaja Werbanowska, Iwo Piotrowski, Karolina Kominek.
Written in Polish by Piotr Policht, Jan 2018, translated by Patryk Grabowski, Apr 2018