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| Zeneta (Agnieszka Zulewska) comforts her ailing newlywed husband Piotr/Pyton (Itay Tiran) in Marcin Wrona's Demon |
Weddings are overwrought family reunions steeped in archaic traditions, where everyone wears a mask of faux frivolity and cheer. Weddings are also a place where much alcohol flows, and family secrets and tensions tend to come to light when inhibitions start to erode. If one had to imagine a worst-case-scenario for weddings, I think that
Demon would fulfill that particular nightmare. Londoner Piotr travels to Poland to wed his best friend's sister, Zeneta, someone he has clearly not known for long since his wedding is his first time meeting the rest of the family. Zeneta's parents have gifted them the country house at which the wedding takes place, and it's definitely a fixer upper.
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| Hana watches as Piotr stands over where her bones lie |
The night before his wedding, Piotr uncovers some bones dug up by a backhoe. Suddenly he gets sucked into a black, bubbling mud puddle, and things take a turn....
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| A Priest marries Piotr and Zeneta in a very traditional ceremony |
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| The bride and groom try to fulfill various wedding traditions |
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| Piotr is really not feeling very well |
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| Piotr's thrashing and shrieking cannot be misinterpreted as "dancing" |
The next morning, family and friends gather to celebrate the couple's nuptials, but as the celebration unfolds, Piotr starts behaving ever more oddly, and feels...rather strange. He starts to see things, and when forced to give a groom's speech, he stutters and gags, eventually spitting out the name "Hana"--much to Zeneta's dismay. He's raising the ghosts of ex-girlfriends?? Well, not quite, but Piotr is at first haunted and then possessed by the poor dead Hana, and the mystery to her disappearance, and what she symbolizes adds a great deal of richness and nuance to the way Poland grapples with its violent past.
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| Piotr's groom's speech is both confusing and awkward |
Itay Tiran's performance as Piotr is truly remarkable. He balances sinister and vulnerable beautifully as he gradually gives himself over to Hana's possession. The various attendees try to medically or rationally explain Piotr's transformation--he's really drunk, he has epilepsy, he's a lunatic--not willing to own up to their possible involvement in the Dybbuk's possession of Piotr's innocent outsider. While a priest, doctor, and the family patriarch all weigh in, its a bumbling old Jewish professor who translates Piotr's Yiddish and realizes who is actually present. Another standout performance is Tomasz Zietek as Ronaldo, a jealous young friend of the family who harbors a not so secret crush on Zeneta, and eagerly participates in keeping the family's secrets--in the process, creating one of his own in a fit of rage.
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| Zeneta's dreams of wedding bliss are demolished |
Finally, there's Agnieszka Zulewska's devastating performance as Zeneta, a woman who on her wedding day sees her dreams of love and family destroyed. She must bear the burden of coming to terms with, and recognizing, her own complicity in her family's, and Poland's, sordid past, and the ending to her story is fitting and irrevocably sad.
While it's early days at the 2016 Fantasia Film Festival, and I have a great deal more to see,
Demon was the first film that powerfully rendered me speechless and overwhelmed. This film is a powerful testament to the secrets and histories that we try to bury in order to "put on a happy" facade and avoid our horrifying past. A must see.
