Cycle index

Camouflage

dir. Krzysztof Zanussi / Poland 1976 / 96’

subtitles: English

retrospective: Krzysztof Zanussi A Plane from Budapest, Anxiety, Attestation, Behind the Wall, Camouflage, Cement and Words, Face to Face, Family Life, Girl and Uhlan, Hipothesis, Holden, Illumination, Imperative, In Full Gallop, Inventory, Krzysztof Zanussi – Essential Conversations, Life As a Fatal Sexually Transmitted Disease, Long Conversation with a Bird, Mountains at Dusk, Persona non grata, Revisit, Spiral, Stop Thief, Students, The Balance, The Bluebeard, The Catamount Killing, The Constant Factor, The Contract, The Death of a Provincial, The Lady with the Ermine, The Lame Devil, The Power of Evil, The Role, The Roof, The Silent Touch, The Structure of Crystal, The Tram to Heaven, The Unapproachable, The Year of Quiet Sun, Time That Passed, Umbrella, Ways in the Night, Wherever You Are, With a Warm Heart, A Woman’s Business, Deceptive Charm Section index

Cast

Piotr Garlicki, Zbigniew Zapasiewicz, Christine Paul Mariusz Dmochowski, Wojciech Alaborski, Mieczysław Banasik, Krystyna Bigelmajer

Film description

One of the most important works of the cinema of moral anxiety. The film describes several days at a summer camp for linguists at which a students' paper competition will be decided. The microcosm of camping houses witnesses a dual of words, arguments and - finally - fists as well, between the associate professor Szelestowski and the master of arts Kruszyński (an excellent duo Zapasiewicz-Garlicki). The associate professor, a diabolic cynic fully aware of his "position" in the morally equivocal world, tests the young idealist, who has not yet been tainted with compromise and who wants to combine a scientific career with moral innocence. This confrontation is more ambiguous than it first appears. Szelestowski's sneering, seemingly directed at the young Kruszyński is in fact a desperate attempt to save the colleague from choices he himself once made and thus it serves as self-purification. A bold and merciless picture of the sick relations in communist Poland's scientific milieu, it was enthusiastically received. The excellent depiction of the social background and some ironic, bitter humour also count among the film's strengths.

Mirella Napolska