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In Spoor, Agnieszka Holland merges environmentalism and feminism in a romantic but dark notion. This film is directed by her and her daughter, Kasia Adamik, who captures the scenery wonderfully. Holland’s film depicts a moist world where Mother Earth is attacked both overtly and covertly by men. Picture if the Coen brothers did one of the extremely dark reimagined Disney movies like Maleficent, and you will be within this story’s mountain town situated between Poland and the Czech Republic. In this dystopian world, men are brutal hunters who destroy the tranquillity of nature and the welfare of animals living in it.
Also, they are the exterminators of everything that is important to the film’s protagonist Duszejko (Agnieszka Mandat), a retired engineer and school teacher who is like a happy version of mother nature, living a secluded but principled existence in that barbaric village. The Klodzko Valley inhabitant loves animals and astrology so much that the blood she spills mysteriously wakes her passionate side. It all kicks off with the baffling loss of her favorite furry companions. As she sets out to search for them, Duszejko comes face to face with shocking apathy from almost every man she encounters, including an especially deranged priest who, for some reason, refuses to accept the fact that dogs have souls and even shames her for viewing them as her children. Suddenly, poor Duszejko finds herself running through an intricate maze drenched in blood with the body count only getting larger.
The crime wave has claimed one of its first victims, a violent poacher who is said to live next to Duszejko. Afterwards, there are other people who go missing from the aftermath such as a police chief, farmer, and a local infamous figure with dubious associations. If only Duszejko’s instincts of people taking nature seriously as Mother Nature seeking vengeance for all the abuse she endured is enough is made clear. But instead, her warnings to the locals are ignored by disturbingly deaf, curt, and misogynistic authorities who for the most part choose to dismiss her worrying and single out hunting law complaints instead. Luckily, at least for Duszejko, there are a few people she can depend on, or so it seems as they are an interesting, deeply mysterious bunch with the kind of distinct peculiarities you’d expect in the orbit of such an eccentric character. For instance, Matoga, her long time neighbor with a family who, like so many people these days, isn’t terribly interested in life, discovers the body of the dead poacher together with Duszejko. Dyzio, an epileptic computer specialist who works at the police force.
Also in the image is a young girl on a self-created adventure of winning back her brother from the grips of custody by whatever means available to her.
“Spoor” Polityka has over-done it when it comes to animal cruelty and feminism, Olga Tokarczuk’s novel Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead illustrates such, and while this issue is tackled it is not done with a great sense of subtlety. Right off the bat, her story is a muddled affair with competing themes, genres, and a myriad of characters (even some romantic elements intertwined), making it evident that an episodic approach might have suited the source material better. Regardless, the performance by Mandat makes the tale’s horrors approachable tapestries which makes the story more than worthwhile. And not to mention, Holland’s mastery of cinematic storytelling, which imbues each frame of her misty, mud-covered, and chilling-to-the-touch Duszejko’s world with the grandeur and dire aliveness of nature set that surrounds her film makes it even better. (Sensitive viewers Beware: dead animal bodies and their gruesome remains are likely to be a recurring sight throughout Spoor). Although it doesn’t compete against the director’s greatest such as “In Darkness” and Washington Square, “Spoor” makes an unmistakable political statement nevertheless with Holland’s lens capturing the heart and soul of the animals who some of the film’s cruelest characters reprehensibly neglect.
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