Art Smitten: Reviews - 2016

When I read the book [Witold Gombrowicz’s Cosmos] in preparation for watching the film I was struck by the singular oddness of the writing (albeit a translation) both in style and in content. There were moments when the sheer incessancy of the intricate madness lost me but I battled through and ended up being wholly won over. Three things in particular struck me: the emphasis on the mundane, the staunch surrealism and the never-quite-referencing of the encompassing void of the eponymous cosmos. It’s vivid and evocative in its deliberately obfuscatory pseudo-dullness - and knowing it was adapted by Andrzej Žuławski, the master of surreal existential mania, made me even more curious to see how it would be turned into a film. Safe to say my trust in Žuławski’s mastery - based, I must admit, on only two films as of yet (Possession (1981) and The Devil (1972)) - was fully validated. It fulfils the major criteria of successful adaptations - that is, hitting most of the same beats and details of th