Wojaczek

This begins with an exit – with a man jumping through a seedy bar window at dawn. This is the suicidal ‘60s poet Rafal Wojaczek as admirably played by non-professional actor and also Polish poet Siwczyk. Part deathwish sleepwalker, part Zbigniew Cybulski (the iconic lead actor of ‘Ashes and Diamonds’) he wanders the graveyards (where his 6-year-old sister Kasia is buried), the writers’ café, his lodging and his parents’ house, stopping only to have intercourse with his nurse girlfriend on a ward table. In this savage tribute, idiosyncratic director Majewski shows a sure grasp of Northern European B&W miserabilism, right down to his taste in crap-but-oddly-soothing bands of Aki Kaürismaki-style banality. Grotesquely amusing.