Andrzej Zulawski’s first film in ten years, Cosmos, is a true testament to the age old wisdom of “just go with it,” as linearity and coherence are thrown out the wayside more often than not. We begin with Witold (Jonathan Genet) stomping through a pretty scenic forest, waxing poetic (literally – he is reciting a poem, verbatim) about the vastness and gloom of the forest until a bird hanging from a string interrupts him. Outraged, he rushes to the French bed and breakfast where he is staying with a cast of characters who are just as, if not more, bizarre than himself. This includes his best friend, Fuchs (Johan Libéreau), who seems to exist for the sake of bringing Witold’s musings back to an intelligible level and ground him as a whole, with quips like, “Sartre? Another acquaintance?” which provides the sweet, SWEET relief from Witold’s pretentiousness the audience craves.
Aside from these two, we have the two owners of the bed and breakfast, their daughter, Lena (the source of Witold’s passion and suffering), her husband (inconvenient!), a maid who is infatuated with Witold, and a couple others sprinkled in the mix. We don’t see them together too often outside of the dinner table, but we don’t really need to, either. It’s their relationships with one another — or lack thereof — that trigger their idiosyncrasies (including, but not limited to: having their speech be overtaken mid-babble by a force they refer to as ‘the bleurgh’, falling into a catatonic state whenever they become overwhelmed, and simultaneously rubbing spoons in a way that is somehow one of the most erotic portrayals of self-restraint and longing I’ve ever seen in film).
Now that we’ve got all that covered, here’s the plot: Witold and Fuchs realize that animals and pieces of wood do not hang themselves and this should be investigated. Their actual investigation is just the two of them looking at these hanging objects, scratching their heads and running around asking, “Who would DO this?” (but much more poetically, since we ARE talking about the brooding Witold, here), and then going back to being overly concerned with their own relationships and reciting lines from Dante’s The Divine Comedy or rattling off some other wisdom with a Daffy Duck voice. Repeat. Such is life. Or, such is Cosmos. Luckily, there is a bit of a payoff at the end, and we do gain some knowledge and satisfaction from Zulawski’s caprices.
The most interesting aspect as a viewer (aside from the unexpected oddities and bursts from the characters) is the way Cosmos is shot and edited — totally unconcerned with cohesiveness. There are frivolous jump cuts and zoom-ins on rakes, unexpected cuts at the height of an extreme zooming close-up with an even more dramatic score. Zulawski does not care what you expect; he feels no need for order. He uses Cosmos, both in plot and in style, to create a landscape that is nearly as meta as its namesake. While it’s easy to get carried away in Witold’s self-aggrandizing murmurs, Zulawski’s choices when it comes to pacing and the way the film is put together as a whole remind us that we shouldn’t take anything too seriously and — while we’re here, I guess — life is a whim, too!
The best treat thrown at us isn’t even a part of the film, but instead the behind-the-scenes footage that we’re shown at the credits. It’s nothing extraordinary; we’re shown hair and make-up, the cast interacting with one another, and rain beating against the umbrellas used to shield all the equipment- but we needed it. After a feature length trip to Zulawski’s land of nearly sardonic cuts, completely unprecedented character voices, and now-you-see-me-now-you-don’t dead animal escapades, it’s nice to be brought back to a more concrete reality. The credits footage serves to throw a little order back into Cosmos and makes it just a little easier to swallow what we’ve just seen. And, man, phew, is it needed. Just don’t make the mistake of thinking about the implications of the title for too long — that’s a whole other thing.
Cosmos
2015
dir. Andrzej Zulawski
103 mins.
