"Lesson of a dead language" is one of the first Polish films where there is nothing specifically Polish in its contents. It is an adaptation of the novel of the same title by the writer Andrzej Kusniewicz, who was also a diplomat. Kusniewicz was mostly interested in the heritage of multinational states, and outside of his native Poland, his books are moderately popular in German-speaking countries. "Lesson of a dead language" is not for everyone's taste, but I liked it a lot, maybe because I was at some stage fascinated by early XXth-century Austrian writers like Stefan Zweig, Robert Musil, Joseph Roth, Arthur Schnitzler, and Franz Kafka. The film is about the final weeks of the life of an Austrian lieutenant, Alfred Kiekeritz, during the last days of WWI, who is mortally ill and also tormented by the atrocities of the war. Kiekeritz is convincingly played by Olgierd Lukaszewicz, and I think it is one of the best roles of that actor. The plot of the film is not very rich, but we are compensated with the visual beauty of highly expressionistic pictures and the intensity of moods. So even now, after more than 40 years, I can still remember the colors of the evening sky above the mountain forest or the huddled and hunched old woman crossing the crooked street of some provincial little town. The world that is presented to us is touched by decline and death, and the mood is enhanced by the beautiful "Moonlight" sonata by Beethoven. What is the meaning of all of this? If we want to stay on the positive side of things, we can say that we don't altogether die and are not completely lost. It is because some part of our experiences is remembered by future generations.
