The exceptionally talented Polish filmmaker
Andrzej Munk, who would go on to make the seminal classic Bad Luck, made his feature film debut with Man on the Tracks, one of the earliest works in the Polish Film
School movement and one of the most influential movies of the country. Munk made wonderful use of Rashomon Effect, immortalized by Akira
Kurosawa in Rashomon, to chronicle
the tale of Władysław, a former railway engineer, who has died under mysterious
circumstances. During an indoor fact-finding session to investigate his death
that nearly resulted in the derailment of a passenger train, the engineer’s
life and the possible explanation for the event under the lens, are meticulously
pieced together from the accounts of various participants – the stationmaster who
had once worked under him and later went on to fire him, the driver of the
train which killed him and who had apprenticed under him for a period of time
sharing a strained relationship, and a signal operator who was the last person
to speak to him. Though some of the members of the small committee are quick to
draw conclusions about him, the elaborate, brilliantly structured and
exquisitely layered flashbacks present him as a complex, well-rounded human being
– a gruff person whose love for the locomotive ultimately results in his
downfall, and that the reality was quite different vis-à-vis the perceptions. Kazimierz
Opaliński provided a superb turn as the deceased protagonist in this psychologically
invigorating, darkly ironic, politically charged, and deeply humanistic commentary
on the subjectivity of human memory.
Director: Andrzej Munk
Genre: Drama/Psychological Drama/Political Drama
Language: Polish
Country: Poland
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