Afterimage

The irony of Afterimage is that it champions an avant-garde artist, warts and all, and yet Wajda’s stylistics here are conventional and understated.

This is an angry, vivid, passionate film.

The film still stands as an imposing monument to the memory of a great artist.

For a filmmaker who was frequently drawn back to the subject of suffering, and especially the anguish of the individual cast against the collective will of cruel, foolish authority, it’s a perfectly fitting farewell.

Though Wajda admires this struggle, the artist’s final pursuit never seems redemptive in the depths of Strzemiński’s isolation and misery.

While this grim story is one worth telling, it’s a pity that in relating the bum’s-rush Strzeminski got in later life, Wadja couldn’t have communicated more of what sustains his legacy as a great artist and innovator.

Afterimage suffers from a clunky script and an overdetermined formal palette.