Unapologetically dense and obtuse, Grzegorz Królikiewicz’s 1977 Polish drama The Dancing Hawk is a beautifully shot but difficult journey into avant-garde cinema.
The narrative tracks the entire life of a character named Michal Toporny (Franciszek Trzeciak). Born into rural poverty, Toporny resents an unhappy childhood and becomes fueled by ambition and an obsessive drive to succeed. Where others see political turmoil or unrest, he sees opportunity.
But the film is as much about style and expression as it is about story, and that style carries a double-edged sword.
On the one hand, the film looks absolutely incredible with stunning and cinematography by Zbigniew Rybczyński. Sometimes voyeuristic, sometimes deliberately obfuscating, and always intimate, Rybczyński’s experimental camera eye is arguably the film’s greatest artistic triumph. A shot mounted at the center of a rotary horsemill both practically and symbolically captures the cyclical nature of a peasant’s toil. Close-ups of characters try to peer into their thoughts. Mirror images, deliberately mismatched, provide a surreal sense of an alien reality. And like any cinematographer, he art-directs with camera angles, and light and shadow.
Camera movement (and non-movement) is deliberate and meaningful. The camera is occasionally stationary to focus on specific events, or even offscreen ones, but generally moves around very freely and eratically in documentary fashion. Sometimes the camera is placed in ways in which the subject is blocked, giving the audience the impulse to move as if to get a better view.
And in a rare humorous scene, Toporny looks on in annoyance while another character slurps noodles hungrily – shot in reverse to amusingly absurd effect.
Toporny’s childhood and early life is portrayed in a chaotic and formless series of confusing and non-sequitur images with little context provided. There’s little very little happening in terms of dialogue, plot, or character, which can be frustrating for viewers trying to find the story in grasping a series of random images. Instead this section of the film isn’t really carrying a specific plot except to show hardship and struggle of farm life, poverty, and war from the perspective of a child.
And although the role is uncredited, it appears that Michal’s father is also portrayed by the same actor who plays adult Michal. Symbolically this offers a picture of the life Michal sees for himself and tries to avoid, but the film’s stye is so random and chaotic in the first act that it can be genuinely confusing to the audience that this is actually a different character (even now, I’m not sure at what point in this segment he switches to playing Michal).
After watching the film, I had a false memory of the first half being this montage of gobbledygook, but in reviewing it again I see that this was really just the first twenty minutes or so – it just felt much longer. After this, the film settles into more of an actual narrative covering adult Toporny’s rise. Playing manipulative politics, gaining entry into higher society, and eventually achieving a position of government authority; but in the process losing more important things in life that he doesn’t value: his roots, marriages, family, and soul.
I do somewhat like the film now after having seen it, but the actual viewing was kind of a slog. The first act is hostile and alienating, but simply knowing ahead of time that it’s a montage with no internal cause and effect would have made the experience less frustrating for me. But in the end, the film achieves a Citizen Kane-like marriage of inventive cinematography and the portrayal of the downfall of ambition (with an older Toporny even actually looking somewhat like Charles Foster Kane).
Special Features and Extras
Note, this review was conducted with a disc-only screener provided by the distributor, so I can’t directly comment on the retail physical package. But it follows Radiance’s usual Limited Edition launch release format with a Scanavo “Criterion style” case with reversible art, a booklet, and – my favorite little trademark of theirs – an obi strip.
Although I wasn’t particularly in love with the film, I found its extras to be terrific: a featurette that helps to untangle the film, and 2 highly entertaining short films by The Dancing Hawk‘s brilliantly experimental cinematographer Zbigniew Rybczyński.
- Carmen Gray on the Dancing Hawk (16:23)
A clear-eyed and informative visual essay about the film. Typically I tend to advise viewers to hold off on watching any analyses until after viewing the film itself, but in this case the film is so dense and utterly baffling that I think prefacing it with a short explanation of its plot and themes is not only permissible but highly recommended. I’m quite positive that the film would’ve been less frustrating and more enjoyable experience for me if I had watched this first to get my bearings.
- Zupa [Soup] (1974, 8:36)
An indescribably cool and radically unique live action/animation hybrid film which employs some visually and technically astounding colorization, compositing, and sound techniques to illustrate a tale of courtship and domesticity. It’s funny, brilliant, and utterly mad.
- Oj! Nie Mogę Się Zatrzymać! [Oh, I Can’t Stop!] (1975, 10:10)
A completely in first-person perspective takes the audience through a strange experience of choatic motion. It begins as a walk in the woods, but gradually picks up speed, careening through through windows, over fences, down streets and corridors, into buildings and industrial spaces – hurtling at ludicrous speed by the film’s end. As with Zupa, the goofy sound design adds a sense of whimsy and weirdness, and the film’s visuals exist in a unique place between somewhere animation and live action, a “live action stop-motion” film. The sense of chaos is reinforced by a very low frame rate which projects the viewer forward erratically as if in a time-lapse. (It’s significantly weirder in motion than these screenshots might seem to indicate).
A/V Out
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The Dancing Hawk Radiance Limited Edition Blu-ray – Get it at Amazon
