One of Krzysztof Zanussi’s rigorous philosophical investigations, centered this time on an alienated young man who clings to the heroic memory of his late father, who was killed in a mountain-climbing accident. As always, Zanussi’s line of thought is astonishingly clear; a former scientist, he builds his movies like theorems, aligning evidence and deducing proofs. His quiet, dedicated, rationalist sensibility is of a kind not often seen in movies, though it isn’t particularly compelling—a coldness, a sense of sterile predetermination, sometimes comes with it (1980).
