The Linnet

Kaziuk is a stubborn peasant living in a village inside the forest in eastern Poland. His wife is pregnant. The village is closed to anything coming from outside; things are done the way they have been done for centuries. Then a teacher is posted there and a school opens. Kaziuk becomes attached to the woman to the point of obsession. In a moment of anger he cuts down a tree his family holds sacred. The real break comes after that, and over something very small: Kaziuk tries to cut the rye with a scythe instead of a sickle. In the village's eyes this is an attempt to break the order, and everybody turns against him. Witold Leszczyński's film builds a question of modernisation on a detail of that size. The source is Edward Redliński's novel. Krzysztof Majchrzak plays Kaziuk. Ninety-two minutes. The mould is village comedy but the tone drifts steadily into darkness.