This is the part that deserves recognition and praise in Spoor. Agnieszka Holland, without holding back, creates the tale of a lonely woman and her emotions and sexuality. But that’s as far as the praise goes. Even though we do feel sympathetic towards the character played by Agnieszka Mandat, we cannot really root for her. On one hand, Duszejko completely lacks any kind of rational thinking ability (to prove that we can recall an absurd scene where she looks for dogs at night with a group of small children), on the other – quite paradoxically, she turns out to be a completely passive character. She is supposed to fight for a better world, but ends up just observing the passing changes. We don’t know what her ultimate goal is, how she plans to achieve it, or what she does to reach it. The most interesting plot point does not happen on screen, they are just presented to us as the ultimate truth that is revealed by the director in the finale.
The movie is also riddled with logical fallacies. The village IT guy is also a brilliant hacker? All these create quite a caricature of an image. Instead of a thrilling suspense, Spoor invokes a bitter smile. Surely, there are some witty dialogues – a mention of ‘testosterone autism’ that makes aging men quirky and pushes them towards reading about Hitler. There is also a mention of mushroom-picking as a national sport for old Polish haters. However, all these are overshadowed by a tale of heartless people and noble environmentalists from the Polish countryside.
One of typical phrases that critics often utter is ‘the movie poses questions but doesn’t give any answers’. Well, it is quite the opposite with Spoor. Agnieszka Holland does not pose any questions, but she gives numerous broad answers. Once we see that there is only one secondary character in the shot, we can be sure that their story is going to follow soon. A girl from the second-hand shop; a young IT guy; a old, quirky guy from the neighbourhood – they all straightforwardly recount their stories without any sense of mystery. Holland does not hold onto her secrets, she lays them bare, as if giving up on any kind of game with viewers.