Zupa (Soup)

Director: Zbginiew Rybczyński
Release date: 1974
Rating: ★★★
Review:

In ‘Soup’ avant-garde film maker Zbigniew Rybczyński shows his fondness of repetitive use of live action material to create startling new images.

Rybczyński would perfect this technique in 1980 with the Academy Award winning short ‘Tango’, but ‘Soup’ already is intriguing and hard to describe. Rybczyński has tinted his source material in stark, contrasting colors, with reds, greens, yellows and blues really popping out of the screen.

The images show the daily routines of a married couple, until it is suggested that the man dies in a train crash. At that point the film burns down. The daily routines are strangely juxtaposed to each other, and there are some very odd touches, like a fork taking a bite out of cheek.

The alienating effect is greatly enhanced by the soundtrack. For sound designer Mieczysław Janik and composer Eugeniusz Rudnik have provided a highly disturbing score full of ordinary sounds amplified to a grotesque effect. For example, when the man brushes his teeth, this rather sounds like a fork scratching on a plate.

I don’t think ‘Soup’ is for everyone, but this intriguing film shows both Rybczyński’s unique approach to film making and the sheer creativity that Communist Poland was in the graphic arts in the 1960s and 1970s.

Watch ‘Soup’ yourself and tell me what you think:

‘Soup’ is available on the DVD-set ‘Anthology of Polish Animated Film’