Dan Conley

In my journey through Eastern European cinema, my favorite discovery has been a 2017 Hungary romance called “On Body and Soul.” Much has been made about this being, possibly, an autistic love story, but I think placing such labels distracts from the simple beauty of the film. There’s a

In the last segment, I mentioned how this episode could use some American style melodrama. But I’ve had second thoughts about that conclusion. There’s actually quite a bit of drama in this episode, and in these scenes featuring Majka and Wojtek. The challenge is reading Eastern European faces.

Dekalog 7 has a very interesting premise. It’s an unusual twist on child abduction stories. It is extremely well cast — right down to the little girl looking very much like the young man cast as her father. And yet — the episode doesn’t live up to its potential. The

Episode 7 of The Dekalog concerns another emotionally powerful storyline — the abduction of a child. It raises two interesting early impressions that are somewhat in conflict. First, episode 7 has elements of Ingmar Bergman’s films in it. There’s an in-your-face emotional aspect to the episode that is unlike

I’m working on a theory that I introduced in my Stendhal wrap-up essays that I believe applies across my work. It goes something like this: Many of the most important decisions we make in life are ultimately inexplicable. They are driven by feelings, held deeply in our nervous system,

In the film that spun off from this episode — “A Short Film About Love” — Magda responds to Tomek’s self harm with a period of self reflection, followed by her own romantic feelings for him. There is a little evidence for this in the episode, enough for the actors to