THE SUN, THE SUN BLINDED ME

Rafał’s mother has died and he has to attend her funeral. The religious ceremony and self-pitying sniffling of the residents of the nursing home where his mother last lived seem pretty peculiar to him. It’s unbearably hot and true grief doesn’t appear to be taking hold of him either. Truth be told, Rafał really isn’t the type at all anyways. So far, so existential. Anka and Wilhelm Sasnal’s most recent film is a screen adaptation of Camus's "The Stranger", in which the setting for the story revolving around an indifferent man who kills another with no real motive whatsoever is moved from the Mediterranean to the Baltic Sea. Alas, just as we have come to expect from the Polish artist couple, this doesn’t take place without raising some questions in addition to those posed by Camus’ already rather complicated theme: “Well, it’s a damn shame, all of the papers are writing about it and then they say that there’s still anti-Semitism in Poland.” What seems to bother the people around him most is his absence, his running away, which he repeats in performative fashion every single day when he puts on his jogging shoes. No wonder, as the hate, the malice and the hypocrisy which permeate Rafał’s surroundings and hold a mirror up to the world of the Polish middle class are truly reason enough to want to run away, far away. That’s why the encounter with a totally different person, who appears to be as out of place as Rafał, is all the more fascinating. Suddenly there are so many possibilities: “The sun, the sun blinded me. And the rushing of the waves.”