Polish surrealist Lech Majewski made his first mark in the U.S. with this 1980 parable about a medieval knight who’s dispatched to locate a Christian icon and gets sucked into a pagan bacchanale. As with most of Majewksi’s movies, there are some head-turning images: in one early scene the knight happens upon the site for a Christian church that consists of a cross-shaped scar in the earth and a line of white shirts hung in the background like crucifixes. Majewksi’s movies have been defined by his Catholic upbringing; this is the only one I’ve seen that treats his spiritual concerns in a narrative context, and it pales in comparison to his later, more imagistic projects (The Roes’ Room, Glass Lips). In Polish with subtitles. 80 min.
