Yet another remarkable Polish, grim-n-gritty cosmicized thriller. What's cosmicized thriller, I hear you ask? Well, it's those conspicuously dark and adult thrillers that used Lovercraft-style ('cosmic horror') tropes to represent the interior life of their protagonists. Think True Detective first season, or the fine Polish series Kruk.
That's more or less what Binded by the Lights sets out to do: a few days in the life of a drug dealer as the.vice tightens. But to a large extent, this is just an excuse for a series of excellent vignettes exploring the different milieu which buy their coke (because it's all coke) from our protagonist Kuba.
You get a dazzling portrait of Polish gangsta rap, half terrifying and half laughable. You get stunning techno nightclub scenes (with not a single shot using bisexual lighting, thank god!) You get dingy Russian restaurants, crime-fueled nouveau riche weddings, singing Vietnamese tailors, and much more. All this is beautifully shot, flawlessly acted by a cast of memorable faces and a remarkable soundtrack, ranging from piano sonatas to dark and hard minimal techno, via mainstream and alternative hiphop and what I imagine to be Polish turbopop. But perhaps the greatest achievement here is the writing, specifically the dialogue, which are always tense and terse, full of flavour and rousing, but remain credible throughout, which is a rare feat in crime films. Special mention to the subtitlers who did a great job btw.
My only complaint is that the second half is not quite as good as the first three our four episodes. Mind you, it's still very good, but as we get more tied up in the plot the directors indulge less of those little vignettes where Kuba really shone. Yet the plot is tight and everything comes together in the last couple of episodes, with long awaited reckonings and moral dilemmas, so I can't complain much!
Don't let the (rather generic) plot description and pink-lit poster dissuade you, this is very much worth your time! You'll thank me late.
