Field of Dogs
Lech Majewski's latest film is the final part of a trilogy, following up The Garden of Earthly Delights and The Mill and the Cross. While this visionary of Polish cinema was inspired by the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel for the first two films, his point of departure this time is the Divine Comedy. Fragments from Dante's epic poem are juxtaposed with scenes from the life of Adam, a former professor of literature now employed as a supermarket worker. The young man gave up his academic career following a personal tragedy: he miraculously survived a car crash that claimed the lives of his beloved and his best friend. The viewer is immersed in the dense, dream-like world of the protagonist's visions, which, by giving him a chance to meet with his deceased loved ones, are the only thing that give him some semblance of peace. The world of Dante's extraordinary fantasy and Adam's imagination are linked with real life in Poland circa 2010, which, for the director, was a time of biblical plagues, the most important of which occurred on April 10, when the president's plane crashed in Smolensk.
Lech Majewski
Born in Katowice in 1953, Lech Majewski is a film and stage director, painter, poet, and novelist. A graduate of the Direction Faculty at the Film School in Łódź, he also studied Graphic Art at the Academy of Fine Arts. He made his feature-film debut in Poland with The Knight (1979), after which he moved to the United States, where he made his next film, The Flight of the Spruce Goose (1985). He has also directed operas, with his crowning achievement in this field being Ubu Rex (1993), which he made along with Krzysztof Penderecki. He also wrote and co-produced Julian Schnabel's acclaimed film Basquiat (1996).
Selected filmography
1994 Ewangelia według Harry’ego / Gospel According to Harry
1997 Pokój saren / The Roe's Room
1999 Wojaczek
2001 Angelus
2004 Ogród rozkoszy ziemskich / The Garden of Earthly Delights
2011 Młyn i krzyż / The Mill and the Cross