The Dancing Hawk

We can all agree that, for the most part, spoilers are bad. But when you’re talking about experimental films that intentionally rearrange the narrative and visual DNA of cinema itself, it helps to have a cheat code. And that’s certainly the case with The Dancing Hawk (1977), an avant-garde Polish drama that follows the professional success and personal failings of one Michal Toporny, a rural farmhand seduced by the Soviet bureaucracy into a life of ruthless ambition. Director Grzegorz Krolikiewicz follows the narrative structure of Citizen Kane but takes wild creative swings that cleverly disguise the tribute to Welles’ classic.

Born into a proud sort of poverty, Toporny (Franciszek Trzeciak) begrudgingly agrees to pursue an education in the city, leaving behind a wife and son in hope of securing a better future for them all. But as his career takes off, Toporny scrubs himself clean of all traces of his humble beginnings, remarrying into a better family and spurning the political requests of his old village leaders. But his burned bridges soon leave him isolated in a world of elites that never truly accepted him as one of their own.

The Kane analogy helps unprepared viewers to latch onto Krolikiewicz’s shotgun approach, which cuts together a brief history of time in extraordinary fashion. Cinematographer Zbigniew Rybczynski mounts his camera to wagons, farm animals and severed limbs long before GoPro made the technique plug-n-play. The film is a whirling dervish of grotesque faces, interrupted violence and nightmarish iconography, or, as critic Carmen Gray puts it in her visual essay, “An onslaught of oblique strangeness.” The camerawork alone is worth a watch just to ogle at the visual ingenuity.

But making sense of it all is the challenge. The Dancing Hawk doesn’t even attempt to emulate a traditional three act structure, although it’s there all the same. Krolikiewicz enjoys making the audience work for its plot points, jumping through time, perspective and memory with an uncomfortable “deathbed” feel and a playful use of off-camera space. For some it will be exhilarating, for others exhausting. ButThe Dancing Hawk doesn’t ask to be understood so much as experienced…preferably with that cheat code in hand.

This is a welcome change of pace for Radiance that’s somehow still right on brand. The 4K restoration looks as good on Blu-ray as most UHDs, with cinematography that blends the best of Vilmos Zsigmond and Raising Arizona era Barry Sonnefeld. Two shorts from DP Zbigniew Rybczynski are included as extras (amazing stuff!) along with the aforementioned visual essay and limited-edition booklet.