No End

The main information we get out of this section of the film is that Dariusz and other political prisoners have decided to start a hunger strike. He does this against the advice of his lawyer Labrador, who spend the opening scene in this section detailing his legal strategy — one designed

Today I watched a film I’ve never seen before — a 2020 Hungarian film by Lili Horvat called “Preparations to be Together for an Unknown Period of Time.” I watched it this morning, thought it was heavily Kieslowski inspired, found an interview with Horvat where she admitted the influence, then

Something about “No End” feels off to me. Grief is supposed to be a central theme of the movie, and Ula definitely goes through the motions of ruminating on her dead husband and looking back at some details of his death. But it all feels clinical, at a distance. Later,

Ula now takes Jacek to school. She clutches him tight before sending him on his way. He runs in with his friends joyously, but then turns back and waves to his mother before he goes. As is true with most Kieslowski children, Jacek is kind and emotionally intelligent. We next

There’s not an ounce of sentimentality in Kieslowski’s “No End.” The director confronts us immediately with the death of a father, with candles in a graveyard, with the spectral images of a man lingering in the house of his family. Hands dominate. It’s the first thing we