The Tribulations of Balthazar Kober (1988) User Reviews

Bit of a Let Down, Here

[nrogershancock · 6/10 · 28 July 2009]

Only two reviews and both are much more positive than my response. Has is, genuinely, a fairly interesting director: both his famous "Saragossa Manuscript" and less famous films like "Hourglass Sanitarium" and his early realist period are some of the most interesting films to come out of Poland following the Polish School period. "Balatazar," however, is a bit of a mess -- a tired last work by a talented director, marred by an odd, soft focus approach that comes off more like "Immoral Women" era Walerian Borowczyc than anything else. An adaptation, it has a picaresque structure that makes the enterprise feel like 80 to 90 pages of the script have been cut out, jumping wildly from point to point without building resonance or internal logic. Genuinely extraordinary sequences, like the final boat ride to the underworld or the early appearances of Archangel Gabriel make this worth seeking out to diligent students of fantastic film; everyone else would be better server with any single one of the films Has made in the two or three decades previous.

As good as Wajda

[donelan-1 · 10/10 · 28 August 2005]

Only one film of this great Polish director has ever made it to video or DVD: The Saragossa Manuscript. But many of his other films are well worth seeing, especially The Tribulations of Balthasar Kober, which is just as unique in its own way. Kober is a young man whose picaresque journey takes him through a society in turmoil, where the spread of literacy and printing, and the new ideas they disseminate, are threatening the established order. He pursues a young woman minstrel into the underworld (in a reversal of the Orpheus legend), and is pursued by another agent who also seems to be not entirely of this world. Like all good story tellers, Has never explains too much, but his gorgeous color photography and perfect sense of pacing carry us along on Kober's journey.