{"id":21553,"date":"2016-10-14T00:18:05","date_gmt":"2016-10-14T07:18:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=21553"},"modified":"2016-10-13T10:37:00","modified_gmt":"2016-10-13T17:37:00","slug":"demon-renews-dybbuk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2016\/10\/14\/demon-renews-dybbuk\/","title":{"rendered":"Demon renews dybbuk"},"content":{"rendered":"

(photo from krakowpost.com<\/a>)<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

The first \u201ccharacter\u201d we meet in Marcin Wrona\u2019s coolly fascinating Demon<\/em> is a yellow bulldozer, rolling menacingly through the empty streets of a Polish village. It\u2019s a harbinger, as well as a metaphor, but of what?<\/p>\n

Bulldozers dig, and they bury. Both tasks are central to the plot of Demon<\/em>, which seizes on the disturbing idea of the dybbuk<\/em> \u2013 a ghost who takes possession of a bridegroom on his wedding day \u2013 and reimagines it in the contemporary world. A world, that is, in which the Holocaust is part of our experience \u2013 even for those who have buried it in hopes of forgetting.<\/p>\n

A Polish-Israeli co-production that is by turns deeply unsettling and absurdly funny, Demon<\/em> follows the arrival of handsome architect Python (Israeli actor Itay Tiran of Lebanon<\/em>) from England for the unambiguously happy occasion of his wedding. The groom is Polish, like his lovely bride Zaneta (Agnieszka Zulewska) and her family, but we have the disquieting feeling from the get-go that he is apart, on his own, an innocent outsider who has (in horror-film tradition) unknowingly ventured into a situation of unimaginable dangers.<\/p>\n

Setting to work on the yard behind the decrepit farmhouse that Zaneta\u2019s family owns and has bequeathed to the couple, Python hops on the ominous, aforementioned bulldozer. A noise makes him stop almost immediately, whence he discovers that he has unearthed bones.<\/p>\n

So begins Python\u2019s descent from a rational, regular guy to a tormented figure of unreachable despair. Unfortunately, but also comically, his transformation mostly takes place during the marathon rain- and vodka-soaked reception following the wedding ceremony.<\/p>\n

Wrona and writer Pawel Maslona freely adapted the latter\u2019s 2008 play, whose title translates as \u201cAdherence\u201d or \u201cClinging.\u201d The director\u2019s decision to shift the setting to a wedding was clearly inspired by the 1937 Polish-Yiddish film Der Dibek <\/em>(The Dybbuk<\/em>), itself adapted from a play by Shimon Ansky.<\/p>\n

In the press notes, Demon<\/em> producer Olga Szymanska says, \u201cWe wound up doing a lot of research into the history of the [dybbuk] story, not to mention Jewish-Polish history in general. If you read the studies on the dybbuk, those who became possessed by the spirit find themselves unable to speak. It originated in a very orthodox society of Jews, so it was the idea of this voice that could never have been heard which was longing to be heard.\u201d<\/p>\n

Given the clue or two I planted above, and this review\u2019s appearance in a Jewish publication, you will have an idea of the general nature of the long-suppressed secret that the spirit who inhabits Python desperately wants uttered. The specific details are melancholy and enigmatic, and Wrona conveys them with chilling effectiveness. (The viewer is haunted also by the knowledge that Wrona died \u2013 reportedly of suicide \u2013 at 42, shortly after the film\u2019s world premi\u00e8re a year ago.)<\/p>\n

It\u2019s always of interest when Polish filmmakers choose to address their country\u2019s past and the spectre of antisemitism, in part because they (and their fellow citizens) have historically been more reluctant to do so than their German and French counterparts. So, Demon<\/em> provokes memories of Aftermath<\/em>, the excellent Polish thriller from 2012 that likewise involved the physical excavation of the Jewish past (gravestones, in this case) and also invoked an otherworldly presence.<\/p>\n

The kind of movie that lingers in the mind for days afterward, Demon<\/em> contains any number of images that don\u2019t just stick but demand to be puzzled over further. The more literal-minded viewer, meanwhile, will find plenty to mull in the movie\u2019s slicing comments on present-day Poland.<\/p>\n

Demon<\/em> screens at Vancity Theatre Oct. 28-Nov. 1. In Polish, English and Yiddish with English subtitles, it is rated R for language and some sexuality\/nudity.<\/p>\n

Michael Fox<\/strong> is a writer and film critic living in San Francisco.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(photo from krakowpost.com) The first \u201ccharacter\u201d we meet in Marcin Wrona\u2019s coolly fascinating Demon is a yellow bulldozer, rolling menacingly through the empty streets of a Polish village. It\u2019s a harbinger, as well as a metaphor, but of what? Bulldozers dig, and they bury. Both tasks are central to the plot of Demon, which seizes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21528,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[787],"tags":[6478,53,6477,4582],"class_list":["post-21553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tv-film","tag-dybbuk","tag-holocaust","tag-horror-film","tag-poland"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21553\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}