The Doll(Lalka)

Sweeping through 19th-century Warsaw, Has’ first film in colour is an opulent if dark portrait of decadent aristocracy, as their social perch is usurped by the ascendance of an avaricious yet disoriented capitalist class. With painterly compositions and dreamy undertones, the lavish period epic traces the rise and fall of a nouveau riche merchant, who is trapped in an obsessive pursuit of a heartless countess, but social strata will prove impossible to overcome. The epoch’s spirit is animated by Has’ hypnotic gliding camera, suffused with the melancholy of unrealised hopes – like the perpetual motion machine his hero invented: rather than moving forward, it only turns back on itself.

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