The Constant Factor (1980)
(Constans)
Country: POL
Technical: col/1.66:1 87m
Director: Krzysztof Zanussi
Cast: Tadeusz Bradecki, Zofia Mrozowska, Malgorzata Zajaczkowska, Cezary Morawski
Synopsis:
When the son of a famous mountaineer takes a job as an electrician, he naïvely reassures his manager that he is no one important: no strings to pull. His boss replies that he doesn't care, so long as he is honest; but the word has inverted its meaning in a country where fiddling the system and keeping your mouth shut have become the cement holding society together.
Review:
Zanussi's portrait of the Communist state, in which the hero's righteous honesty is the thing most likely to get him into trouble, represents a pretty damning indictment in the year of the Gdansk Accords. He encounters precious little in the way of solidarity on the part of his co-workers, and finds solace only in the reductive beauty of mathematics. The constant of the title is precisely an element in an equation, denoted 'ni', but it is also his own ethical constancy. Bradecki gives a heartfelt performance as the martyr who, like his father, finally falls victim to mathematical probability while on the end of a rope.
(Constans)
Country: POL
Technical: col/1.66:1 87m
Director: Krzysztof Zanussi
Cast: Tadeusz Bradecki, Zofia Mrozowska, Malgorzata Zajaczkowska, Cezary Morawski
Synopsis:
When the son of a famous mountaineer takes a job as an electrician, he naïvely reassures his manager that he is no one important: no strings to pull. His boss replies that he doesn't care, so long as he is honest; but the word has inverted its meaning in a country where fiddling the system and keeping your mouth shut have become the cement holding society together.
Review:
Zanussi's portrait of the Communist state, in which the hero's righteous honesty is the thing most likely to get him into trouble, represents a pretty damning indictment in the year of the Gdansk Accords. He encounters precious little in the way of solidarity on the part of his co-workers, and finds solace only in the reductive beauty of mathematics. The constant of the title is precisely an element in an equation, denoted 'ni', but it is also his own ethical constancy. Bradecki gives a heartfelt performance as the martyr who, like his father, finally falls victim to mathematical probability while on the end of a rope.
(Constans)
Country: POL
Technical: col/1.66:1 87m
Director: Krzysztof Zanussi
Cast: Tadeusz Bradecki, Zofia Mrozowska, Malgorzata Zajaczkowska, Cezary Morawski
Synopsis:
When the son of a famous mountaineer takes a job as an electrician, he naïvely reassures his manager that he is no one important: no strings to pull. His boss replies that he doesn't care, so long as he is honest; but the word has inverted its meaning in a country where fiddling the system and keeping your mouth shut have become the cement holding society together.
Review:
Zanussi's portrait of the Communist state, in which the hero's righteous honesty is the thing most likely to get him into trouble, represents a pretty damning indictment in the year of the Gdansk Accords. He encounters precious little in the way of solidarity on the part of his co-workers, and finds solace only in the reductive beauty of mathematics. The constant of the title is precisely an element in an equation, denoted 'ni', but it is also his own ethical constancy. Bradecki gives a heartfelt performance as the martyr who, like his father, finally falls victim to mathematical probability while on the end of a rope.