The Roe's Room

Majewski’s normal multi-tasking takes on even greater dimensions in his absolutely singular ‘autobiographical film opera’. Writing (libretto and music), directing and designing this often limpidly beautiful ‘cycle of life’ parable, he conjures some remarkable images out of an extremely contained spatial and thematic environment (an anachronistic turn of the century apartment). Moving chaptered through the seasons, he follows the daily routines of an elderly couple and their poetic young son as, in a series of tableaux nature, with its attendant flora and fauna, occupies the rooms. Mortality is bred in the grasses and shrubs; deer roam through the inevitable human passing. The son carries the observation, sensitive to the metaphorical implications of this growth and fade. One of a kind, if ‘The Roe’s Room’  has filmic kin, the family tree might include Maddin’s ‘Dracula’, aspects of Bartas, perhaps even Don Askarian. But the fictions of Bruno Schulz offer perhaps a more direct  way into Majewski’s vision.