Film review: Political thriller Leave No Traces is a multi-layered affair
Leave No Traces
★★★★☆
Based on historical events, Leave No Traces (15A) is a political thriller set in Communist Poland during the 1980s.
When student Grzegorz Przemyk (Mateusz Górski) is brutally beaten in a police station, and subsequently dies of his injuries, the only witness is his friend Jurek (Tomasz Zietek). With Pope John Paul II due to visit Poland, the authorities try to hush up the circumstances around Grzegorz’s death, not least because Grzegorz is the son of the Solidarity activist Barbara Sadowska (Sandra Korzeniak). Soon Jurek becomes the most wanted man in Poland, as the State brings the full weight of its resources to bear on suppressing the truth by any means necessary.
Jan P Matuszynski’s film is a multi-layered affair that explores the killing of Grzegorz Przemyk from a number of angles, which include the desperate attempts by General Czeslaw Kisczak (Robert Wieckiewicz) to enact a cover-up.
Jurek is the ostensible hero of the piece, but it’s when we see the story through the authorities’ eyes that the film is at its most fascinating, as their increasingly ridiculous attempts to shunt the blame onto anyone except the guilty parties results in a fact-mangling cat’s cradle worthy of Kafka and Orwell at their most absurd.
(cinema release)
