Very interesting and always surprising film by Skolimovski.
With beautiful images, a marked dreamlike and allegorical character, and an absurd sense of humor much more interesting and original than that of Polanski's Cul-de-sac of that same year, it is a pity that this small jewel of the Polish New Wave (as many others) is less well known than less interesting samples of the French or British new waves.
There is, of course, an excess of symbolism (nothing obvious otherwise), and of the allegorical (even in the soundtrack), but its playful tone (from that wonderfully surprising first scene), its careful structure, free and recurrent at the same time, and its markedly dreamlike character, save it from the simple programmatic reading.
Filled with mysterious images and moments of true poetry, it plays to the bewilderment of the viewer who is frequently disoriented but never lost.
The protagonist has entity as a character, although he functions basically as a representative of a disoriented and disappointed youth, oppressed by demands that does not know very well how to deal with. The generation that did not fight in the war, the generation that wants to buy a car, a flat, the generation that does not enter into the distribution of the insufficient cake.
Similar concerns to those of the angry young men of free cinema (just from the other side of the wall), but here with a more intellectualized tone (perhaps too much), much more inventive, experimental and lyrical approach and with less fuss, less aggressiveness and bad humor.
In short, a magnificent film, another example of a golden age of Polish cinema that is unfortunately not as well known as it deserves.
