Zdzisław has a cold perception of the world, he understands it with his reasoning and not his heart. He even treats his family as an object of observation – just like a behaviourist, he analyses their habits, tries to understand and label them. He constantly photographs. When he buys his first camera, he even shoots family fights with it. He uses a tape recorder to document his family’s conversations.
Tomek is the opposite of the emotionally reserved father. ‘Love is a wonderful feeling, but with all the rest of the things, a man gets exhausted. I don’t know why, but I always put too much on myself’, he wrote in a well known letter to Ewa Kikta. The oversensitive boy raised in the shadow of the famous father lives on the border of depression and hysteria, as he is simultaneously petrified and intrigued by the reality. He is obsessed with death. For years, he threatens his parents that he will commit suicide and even tries to do so several times.
Polish love
‘The genius father and the genius son’, young Piotr Dmochowski (Andrzej Chyra) says during his first visit at the Beksiński’s household. ‘And the holy spirit’, Ms. Beksińska (Zofia Perczyńska) adds jokingly.
Her joke says everything about Zofia’s character. In Aleksandra Konieczna’s interpretation, she is the good spirit of the family home and the most important link holding the family together. This Romance studies scholar is a mediator, a loving wife and an overprotective mother, guardian, cleaner, cook, and driver all at the same time.
Konieczna’s role only seemingly disappears in the turmoil of idiosyncrasies and the eccentric performances from Seweryn and Ogrodnik. Konieczna stands in the shadow, but she strongly marks her presence. Her protagonist is like that ‘Polish love’ from Wojciech Młynarski’s song, ready to pay any price for the happiness of her dear ones. She is the one preparing Zdzisław’s instant coffee, without which he is unable to work, she cleans Tomek’s apartment while he is away, and when their son visits them for dinner – she puts a small fan next to the hot potatoes, so that they're ready to eat quicker. Thanks to Konieczna, Zofia’s character becomes poignantly fragile and ordinary, yet at the same time the most incredible out of the three of them.
Acting ambivalence determines the artistry of Matuszyński’s film – Andrzej Seweryn, who could easily turn Beksiński into a weirdo and psychopath, instead creates a fully comprehensive image of the artist’s intentions and beliefs – even when he convinces a doctor not to rescue his son after an attempted suicide and when he coldly observes his deceased mother.
In comparison to the restrained Seweryn, Dawid Ogrodnik’s acting appears to be overly expressive. The young actor once again shows that he is able to completely immerse himself in a role. He doesn’t play Tomek Beksiński, but becomes him. He thunders and teases, sometimes coming close to a caricature, but never becoming it.
Death on five
Matuszyński’s film is very masterful, but it is not a masterpiece, mainly because the dramaturgy doesn’t keep up with the psychology. Matuszyński presents his characters as if they were pawns shuffled around the board of life by a dark force, some kind of Evil Demiurge from Cioran’s writings. While in a classic film drama, a protagonist’s task is to fight the obstacles and to complete a journey which will change everything, Matuszyński’s characters are victims of fate. They don’t control their lives even for a moment, they are unable to face it. They can only take punches. Death is inevitable – which is why it causes no emotion.
