Starring: Itay Tiran, Agnieszka Żulewska, Andrzej Grabowski
Directed by: Marcin Wrona
Rating: ★★★★☆
It is not always that the final work of director who tragically passed away is worth being considered as an artistic testament. Marcin Wrona hanged himself in his hotel in Gdynia while he was preparing for a screening of Demon at the most respected film showcase in his country. Wrona’s cinematic attempt shows the evolution of a promising cineaste who would still have a lot to say to moviegoers.
In Demon he adapted a cinematic version of one of the most dreadful beliefs derived from Jewish folklore as based on Piotr Rowicki’s play Adherence. Curiously enough, Polish cinema has not capitalized on the mythology of the dybbuk, a malicious spirit of a deceased person which possesses the living, after Second World War. The last occurrence was in 1937 when Michał Waszyński released an expressionistic gem of the same name in Yiddish.
The screenplay is centered around the moral descent into madness of Peter “Piotr” (Itay Tiran) who moves with no regrets from England to the Polish countryside to marry Żaneta (Agnieszka Żulewska). After discovering some human remains in the garden of the family’s house, the intruder turns to be the most tormented groom ever seen in Polish film. The distastrous reception is drenched in vodka just like the banquet displayed in Smarzowski’s The Wedding (2004) but purged from any black comedy.
Tiran certainly leveraged his experience as Hamlet on the stage with Israeli Cameri Theater to shape Piotr’s character. His acting evokes the convulsive body of a werewolf that cannot turn into a wolf, and possibly is only faking madness in front of Żaneta’s family and the other guests.
Despite not being a particularly gory effort, but rather a Polanski-esque film, Demon shows how much Polish cinema is incomplete due to its chronic lack of solid horror non-war-based productions. We truly hope that the domestic yellow press and Wrona’s aficionados alike will appreciate Demon avoiding any speculation about the causes of his suicide.
Originally published by The Krakow Post on November 05, 2015