The Big Animal (Duze Zwierze)
The Big Animalis probably the only movie about a middle-aged Polish couple who adopt a camel, but it's not faint praise to say that it's also the best one. In fact, director and co-star Jerzy Stuhr, working from a script by the late Krzysztof Kieslowski, has made a film that's beautifully shot, well-acted, and whimsically charming. Zygmunt Sawicki (Stuhr) and his wife (Anna Dymna) are bemused, to say the least, when a camel (of the Bactrian or two-humped variety), having apparently been abandoned by the circus it was traveling with, turns up outside their front gate. They soon become quite attached to the big, gentle beast, especially the sweet-natured Zygmunt, who's fond of conducting one-sided conversations with it while they stroll through the small town. The locals, especially the younger ones kids, seem quite taken with this most unusual pet as well--at first, anyway. But petty jealousy, ignorance, intolerance, and greed (a camel in the Polish countryside? Gotta be a way to cash in on that) spoil the Sawickis' idyll, and soon Zygmunt is being interrogated by mealy-mouthed town council members and facing angry picketers in his own yard. The animal is "no use to the community." It's making the children late for school. Why, it's probably carrying some deadly African strain of venereal disease. The camel must go! Zygmunt's reaction to all of this ranges from rage and indignation to confusion and, ultimately, sadness and grief. Along the way,The Big Animalis filled with lovely moments, like the camel "singing" along as Zygmunt practices his clarinet or looming docilely outside the kitchen window as the couple eats dinner. It's also filmed in luminous black & white by cinematographer Pawel Edelman (an Oscar nominee for Roman Polanski’sThe Pianist); the final wintry sequence at the Warsaw Zoo is breathtaking. A 30-minute interview with Stuhr (in Polish with subtitles, just like the main attraction) is the principal bonus feature.--Sam Graham