Metacritic reviews

Led by a powerful and quietly resilient performance by Linda, Afterimage may not contain everything Wajda has said or wish to have said, however it is a moving tribute to a career marred by personal and national trauma, and one of the year’s best pictures.

This is an angry, vivid, passionate film.

The film still stands as an imposing monument to the memory of a great artist.

Andrzej Wajda's film is a lean, unwavering look at the effects of artistic idealism in the face of fascist doctrine.

For a filmmaker who was frequently drawn back to the subject of suffering, and especially the anguish of the individual cast against the collective will of cruel, foolish authority, it’s a perfectly fitting farewell.

After 90 years and more than 50 films, Wajda has earned the right to make stagey period pieces like Afterimage, minor codas to a gloriously symphonic career.

Though Wajda admires this struggle, the artist’s final pursuit never seems redemptive in the depths of Strzemiński’s isolation and misery.

For all of the perfection of the period-detail browns and greys, Afterimage could have done with a touch more colour.

While this grim story is one worth telling, it’s a pity that in relating the bum’s-rush Strzeminski got in later life, Wadja couldn’t have communicated more of what sustains his legacy as a great artist and innovator.

Afterimage suffers from a clunky script and an overdetermined formal palette.