Check out this film this XMAS Period - A Grain Of Truth

 

A tense and cleverly constructed dark thriller, director Boris Lankosz latest film was chosen as the Opening Film at this years Play Poland Film Festival 2015 in Edinburgh. Based on the hugely successful crime novel by Zygmunt Miloszewski, this murder mystery with mystical undertones fuses Poland’s Jewish past with modern day beliefs – and one hell of an investigating prosecutor!

When a grisly murder is committed in the medieval town of Sandomierz it first seems like the work of a women hater, or a man bent on revenge. But when Prosecutor Teodor Szacki (Robert Wieckiewicz), newly divorced and having left Warsaw for a new beginning in the aforementioned small town, arrives at the crime scene little does he know that this will turn into one epic case! Battling his own demons – and never mind his feeling of dislocation in unfamiliar surroundings – Szacki soon discovers that there is much more to the crime which at first is treated as a singular case. Just when he thinks he’s discovered the identity of the killer – and his thinking isn’t altogether far removed from the truth – another bizarre murder occurs, albeit allegedly unconnected to the first one. Now Szacki needs to re-assess everything and comes to the conclusion that the murders are connected after all. Not only that, but both killings were seemingly carried out in accordance with ancient Jewish rituals. While he reveals to the enquiring press that the murders might have a connection to ancient Hebrew beliefs, next day’s headline in the local newspaper suggests that a rampant Jewish killer is at work, prompting anti-Semitic hysteria amongst the locals! Gradually, the investigation becomes more and more dangerous for Szacki as a deadly love triangle, Nazi symbols and ancient Jewish rituals lead him into a labyrinth out of which there appears to be no escape. It is only when Szacki visits a rabbi that he comes to realize that the roots of some legends are fantasy and without a grain of truth in them.

Skilfully directed, Ziarno Prawdy (original Polish title) draws you right into the picture and together with Prosecutor Szacki we too are feverish in the quest of solving this puzzle. Robert Wieckiewicz is perfect casting in the part of Szacki, a man who thrives on rational principles but is forced to ‘open his mind’ to things that are just too strange to explain. The pace works equally well, never descending into unnecessary action spectacle but fast enough to hold us in its grip. Particularly clever is the animated opening sequence, suggesting the ritualistic slaughter of children (this thankfully does not happen in the film!) at the hands of ancient and mystical Jews.