User reviews

A strange, haunting film set during the German occupation of Poland. There are no Nazi's or much action, it's a reserved and emotional study of morality in an immoral world. It is quiet, analytical and foreboding. While not a film that crashes into you, it creeps up and breathes down your neck - the dreary, hopeless atmosphere it creates is top-notch. I liked it but many might find it dull.

RYS (The Lynx) is pure mood cinema that does not tell a story in the traditional sense but creates a suction effect through its magnificent images of opulent background music and natural design that need to know. It is a slow-moving and suitably creepy drama that carefully builds the air of menace and dread. This is an intelligent portrayal of psychological dilemmas of a priest set during the German occupation of Poland during the WWII. There are no war sequence but instead Stanislaw Rozewicz shows the war from the perspective of a more intimate drama, focusing on the young vicar, Father Konrad facing serious dilemmas. And during this time, he meets Rys, a young partisan in the confessional who appears as a revolutionary on an assignment to kill a local farmer Alojzie's stelm accused of treason. Then begins the investigation of existence which replaces the explanations and motivations of a psychological calculation. The film retains a disturbing ambiguity throughout, right up to its powerful ending. It is not a guaranteed answer, that can be seen in the face of the priest. The agony that becomes almost unbearable to the extent that the film, in the shortness of the scenes, the moments of waiting and silence, adjusts to that decay and that fear. There are scenes in this film that will remain with you long after you have seen it. Rozewicz presents a view of morality that is about as sophisticated as it gets. A grand achievement of one of the most distinguished directors in Polish cinema.