The Rump of a Great Whale

The “trash kids” of the waning days of the Polish People’s Republic in Mariusz Treliński’s feature film debut. A squatter-filled, grimy Warsaw; painting studios in tenement buildings; concert dives –all filled with the meaninglessness, unfulfilled dreams, and addictions of the lost generation of the 1980s.

The plot here is rather sketchy: “What happened to us? We used to have dreams, after all.” Treliński’s film stands out positively against the backdrop of the era’s specific genre – the “cautionary tale” about youth going astray. Above all, this is due to the set design, the painterly atmosphere, and the cinematography – which is somewhat reminiscent of the pop-avant-garde scene in West Berlin or, in a more distant way, echoes the documentary Warsaw 88 89 by Tomasz Dominik and Piotr Rozbicki.

A few years earlier, the director had made a short film about the band Dezerter, so perhaps thanks to that, he created what was likely the most authentic foray into punk in the mainstream at the time.

Here we can see a fairly long concert sequence featuring the band Post Regiment, which is why The Rump of a Great Whale enjoyed a long run as an unexpectedly cult classic.

[Olga Drenda]