Film

Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more
 

Family Life (1970)

Director: Krzysztof Zanussi

Average user rating
No reviews

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Tricked into returning home for the first time in six years, a successful young Polish engineer is forced to decide whether or not to take responsibility for the destructive lifestyle of his estranged, alcoholic father, bitter that the family's wealth has gone, his furniture is being sold, and his grandfather's glass factory is now state-owned. Despite the laconic passivity of Olbrychski's performance as the engineer, Family Life compels attention by its richly detailed evocation of the family's crumbling mansion, its overgrown garden under siege from modern apartment buildings, and the precision with which Zanussi develops the engineer's struggle to accept, and finally to free himself from, the tentacles of his father's capitalist past. A neatly dismissive coda wraps up this taut, supremely well-made example of formal Polish film-making.

Author: JPy 0000-00-00 00:00:00

Time Out Film Guide

  • Print this page
  • Send to a friend

What do you think?
Post your review now

clear rating
Min 1 star. Zero stars will be treated as unrated.

*mandatory fields


Cast & crew

Director: Krzysztof Zanussi

Producer: Janina Krassowska

Cast: Daniel Olbrychski, Maja Komorowska, Jan Nowicki, Jan Kreczmar, Halina Mikolajska, Anne Mikolajska full cast

Duration: 93 mins


Features

Making a name for himself

Making a name for himself

Sin Nombre's Cary Joji Fukunaga learned his lessons well.

To the letter

Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.

Mind over matter

David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.

Fool's gold

Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.

We are the championed

Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."

A history of violence

Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.

True romantic

James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.

Playing in the dark

MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.

Junk bonds

Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.