1972 ‘Diabeł’ Directed by Andrzej Żuławski
During the Prussian army's invasion to Poland in 1793, a young Polish nobleman Jakub is saved from the imprisonment by a stranger who wants in return to obtain a list of Jakub's fellow conspirators. Following his mysterious saviour across the country, Jakub sees the overall chaos and moral corruption including his father's death and his girlfriend's betrayal. Being apparently demented by what he has seen, he commits a number of seemingly motiveless and gory killings.
My tastes clearly veer toward the strange, artsy, and dramatic. I put this on as a palate-cleanser, and that says something about me. I know Zulawski is a strange, intense, and stylistically impressive filmmaker, and I know his films require insight and effort to engage in effectively. That I thought this was the right thing to wash the taste of the worst of stoner bullshit out of my mind suggests something twisted in my mind. That i was right suggests something twisted in my soul.
Zulawski's The Devil (its Polish title Diabel has a nice ring to it in my mind) is actually a fairly direct metaphor for oppression and violence in 1960s/70s Poland, especially compared to the fever dreams…
I reveled in every second of this maniacal masterwork from the crazy-ass Andrzej Zulawski. Set in 1793 during the Prussian invasion of Poland, our protagonist Jakub is freed from imprisonment by a mysterious character who seeks a 'list' of his co-conspirators (allegory is at play, and likely why the film was banned in Poland upon release) as the price for his rescue, and let us just say a Faustian type pact is made, turning Jakub into a crazed mass-murderer armed with a straight razor. The hysteria dial is turned up to maximum, where every character acts as if they are devil possessed - Fucking brilliant and my fave Zulawski film thus far!
Robert Beksinski's #2 Film Selection for Edgar
First think of Goethe's Faust.
Zulawski's poetic piece of exploitative sensory overload acts as a tragedy. Plotwise, the historical setting never matters, which takes place during the Prussian army's invasion of Poland in 1793. During the invasion, a man (Jakub) who was imprisoned because of an assassination plot against the King is saved by a stranger. In exchange, the stranger asks him the list of Jakub's fellow conspirators. It is a bargain. Maybe implicitly, Jakub sold his life to this stranger, following him across the country as he progressively becomes more insane each time at the sight of the rotten state of an impoverished and decaying nation. As the plot outline sells, he…
Andrzej Zulawski was absolutely insane and picked the right profession when he turned into a filmmaker. The Devil is one of his lesser-known horror films, with an, unsurprisingly, complicated story about a man who survives a tragedy and becomes a mass murderer along the way. The storyline is somehow similar to Faust though it's quite hard to follow after a while. However, I love the delivery of lines, the brutality and the bizarreness of Zulawski's films and I'll watch this any day.
78/100
Another Octoblur tradition is my sometimes awkward attempts at shoehorning into the schedule a few art films with horror-ish tones. These typically get slipped in during Foreign Horror Week, and this year is no exception, with two highbrow efforts stolen from the darker corners of world cinema.
The first of these foreboding foreign arthouse exercises is DIABEL, a semi-nightmarish political allegory from Polish director Andrzej Zulawski. Zulawski looms large in the horror genre due to his blistering 1981 divorce-themed hell-ride POSSESSION (reviewed as part of Octoblur 2016), but DIABEL is far less of an in-your-face shocker, keeping its sturdy thrum of terror cocooned inside a naturalistic story of moral despair.
During an 18th century invasion of Poland, a mysterious man…
I need to watch more Andrzej Żuławski. After multiple bewitching viewings of POSSESSION and a baffling experience with ON THE SILVER GLOBE, I added THE DEVIL to my watchlist and promptly forgot about it for years. The other night, attempting to satiate an unquenchable thirst for horror that grips me during every Halloween season, I thought "hey, THE DEVIL is a horror movie, I'll watch that." It turns out that THE DEVIL is not really a traditional "horror movie" per se, though it is certainly horrifying. Instead, it's more of a thinly veiled political screed armed with a rusty straight razor. This movie was indeed banned in Poland upon its release for its political content, and as a result of…
Spooks & Hoops: An Attempt at Hooptober 5 - Film #52
1. Move over, Vaas, there's a new definition of insanity in my book.
2. But really now, even with a protagonist like Jakub, Zulawski, based on this and Possession, seems to be a damn master at making films with atmospheres that just really get to me in the best possible way.
Hooptober 5.0: 30/33
A feverish downward spiral of a movie that is technically impressive and often has interesting and baffling imagery.
Sadly, I couldn't connect to it at any level and it wasn't really enjoyable to me at all for most of its runtime.
What I possess seems far away to me, and what is gone becomes reality
hysteria & madness in Poland. My least favorite Zulawski thus far and I still loved the score, camera movement, and ability to make everyone feel possessed by something. A beautifully hardcore movie.
Dour. Harrowing. Horrifying. This descent into madness is a remarkable accomplishment, a soul tending journey into the very worst parts of the human experience, full of death, madness, and despair. It's also impeccably filmed, showing Zulawski as a true master of his craft.
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