Cosmos

In Andrzej Zulawski's film 'Cosmos', a pair of weird young men, one of them a writer, visit a boarding house full of even weirder characters; and after that, things just get weirder still. Some of the weirdness is apparently the story that the writer is imagining; but the boundary between reality and fantasy is loosely drawn, and the fact that scenes from the filming are shown over the credits but before the final "in movie" scene is at one with the deliberately incoherent feel of the piece as a whole. On one hand, the film is just daft, taking semi-random leaps wherever an opportunity presents itself; yet after a while it becomes oddly watchable, even if it doesn't make sense. I don't think you can call it a good film, or even an interesting one; but there's a beguiling quality to the craziness nonetheless.

Cosmos starts with two friends trying to get away from it all. One is Witold who has flunked his law exam and the other is Fuchs who has just packed in working for a Parisian fashion house. They head off to some seaside resort to a family run guest house. This family run guest house is from the more bizarre end of the market, the sort that gets very mixed reviews on Trip Adviser. For starters things are slightly awry from the start, with dead birds found hanging and staffed by people who are so emotionally unstable that a Ritalin overdose would, possibly, have little effect.

The backgrounds of the two young men are juxtaposed brilliantly to the mayhem that is going on around them. Witold seems to be a frustrated dilettante and writer who is wont to fall in love and Fuchs is a force of nature who sparkles with a misplaced energy – if such a thing really exists. The increasing madness seems to deliberately challenge any form of acceptable narrative whilst telling stories that will, eventually, add up to the whole.

This will not be a film for everyone; it can be seen as 'art house' or even deliberately annoying, but when you peel back the layers there is so much here that it is actually a celluloid feast. The performances are at once over the top and sensational as well as being sensationalist. Jean-François Balmer as Leon the patriarch of the house is just sublime as is his screen wife - Sabine Azéma. But the real star is writer and director Andrzej Zulawski who sadly died in February. As far as a Swan song could go it would be hard to beat such a piece of original work as this – he will be truly missed. If you like cinema that challenges convention and has its heart firmly planted on its, over acting, sleeve then be prepared for a treat.

I can hardly say that I've seen all of Andrzej Zulawski's films, but I think even with a sample size of one it's safe to say the man's oeuvre represents the cinematic equivalent of Expert Mode in videogames. The likes of 'L'important c'est d'aimer' and 'Possession' are rich and sumptuous, bountiful feasts of both plot that's readily discernible and enticing, and artistic flourishes that are flummoxing, let alone exceptional performances and film-making. But if his other works are Expert Mode, where does that leave us with this, the filmmaker's last picture before his death, that seems to take the most far-flung and outrageous proclivities of his storytelling style to new extremes? To be perfectly honest, 'Cosmos' is simply beyond me. There's no doubt in my mind that this wonderfully well made, bearing acting, direction, editing, cinematography, and otherwise craftsmanship that are intense as they present, and seemingly precisely calculated. Everyone involved is to be commended for what they gave of themselves for this production. As to the writing? Well, I congratulate those viewers who are able to in any fashion pick up on what Zulawski was doing here.

To be clear, I don't know how much of 'Cosmos' as we see it purely reflects Witold Gombrowicz's novel, and how much stems from Zulawski's adapted screenplay. This, and the vague detection of some form of narrative, are the only facets of the writing about which I can claim any certainty. Terry Gilliam, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, and Alejandro Jodorowsky combined could not conjure characters, dialogue, or scene writing more weird, wild, exaggerated, cartoonish, disparate, and downright inscrutable. Amidst it all I see glimmers of something grander, the faint shadow of whatever vision that was intended for this tableau. Such wisps are outnumbered and overwhelmed on all sides by the towering babel that the movie otherwise represents, a perplexing assemblage of bizarrerie that's strung together like a surrealist daisy chain. Well and truly, I just don't know what to make of any of it.

It's well done, whatever "it" is. One can appreciate art without wholly grasping it. On the other hand, it would be appreciated far more if it weren't 100%, consciously impenetrable. Emphasizing the point, I can't tell if the line "He never knew how to finish his novels, nor their meaning" is a plainspoken admission, or a joking tease. Once more, I offer my sincere, wholehearted congratulations to viewers who watch 'Cosmos' and genuinely See it, and Understand. I'm mystified, and admiration of the fundamental labor that went into it only gets one so far.

To my mind, while being quintessential Zulawski, thanks also to the film being in French with mostly native actors there are welcome homages to Jacques Rivette (Céline et Julie vont en bateau) and Éric Rohmer, maybe a dod of Resnais and Cocteau even (after all, Zulawski studied cinema in France). Despite the astonishing allure of the lush greenery (filmed in Portugal, with scant sunshine and plenty of wind off the Atlantic) we are force-fed with the antics and dialogues of a wide range of extreme characters who have nothing and everything in common: food, folly, and literature, perversions and obsessions, madness. I am grateful to the insightful comments of those reviewers who spoke less of themselves and more of the film itself, e.g., "the direction is unrelentingly assured." Indeed, a filmic taxonomy of dementia.

Fifteen years is quite a long time for an acclaimed director to have his film shown to audiences.However,it is worth the wait as Polish director Andrzej Zulawski has chosen an appropriate film to astonish both his admirers as well as critics.In 'Cosmos' the entire notion of narration is challenged.There is no straight plot and some of the lines uttered by actors might not make much sense to casual viewers. However,there is something gripping in the way actors have performed in a scenario where a lot of strange things are happening.Director Zulawski also pays his tribute to great writers and filmmakers in the form of their names mentioned in dialogs.Cosmos is not a run of the mill film with a clearly defined beginning,middle and an end.This is one reason why it is not everybody's film.Cosmos would appeal to those viewers who want to delve deeper into the idiosyncratic world of Mr.Andrzej Zulawski who is one of the most innovative filmmakers working in the field of cinema.