A young Polish man living with his dying mother harbours dreams of scaling the Himalayas but has to face rampant corruption at his workplace in Zanussi’s character study of a person caught in the two worlds of morality and mortality.
Review #2,721
Dir. Krzysztof Zanussi
1980 | Poland | Drama | 87 min | 1.66:1 | Polish & English
Not rated – likely to be NC16 for coarse language
Cast: Tadeusz Bradecki, Zofia Mrozowska, Malgorzata Zajaczkowska
Plot: A young man is confronted with corrupt and vindictive colleagues at work and negligent officials at the hospital where his mother is dying. As he searches quixotically for a steadfast moral code by which to live, he suffers from the knowledge of human frailty and our darker inclinations to do harm.
Awards: Won Jury Prize, Prize of the Ecumenical Jury & Nom. for Palme d’Or (Cannes)
Distributor: TVCO
Accessibility Index
Subject Matter: Moderate – Corruption; Morality; Mortality
Narrative Style: Straightforward
Pace: Slightly Slow
Audience Type: Slightly Arthouse
Viewed: MUBI
Spoilers: No
Only my second Krzysztof Zanussi film after Family Life (1971), The Constant Factor is one of the more highly-awarded pictures of his career, winning the Jury Prize at Cannes.
It isn’t a brilliant film by any measure but it unfurls as a grounded tapestry, weaving a narrative that delves into the dichotomy of a young Polish soul ensnared in the realms of morality and mortality.
His mother is slowly withering away from disease, while his father who died many years ago while scaling the Himalayas remains both a distant memory and an inspiration. Witold wants to climb the very same mountain at some point in his life, to draw spiritually closer to his late father.
He tries to save up enough money to do so, but the company that he works for is also diseased—there’s rampant corruption from the management down to the last worker, something that Witold is ethically against.
“You really believe the world will get better if it gains one righteous man more?”
So, with The Constant Factor, Zanussi portrays, though not always with allegorical intent, a human story about survival. This is Poland in the early 1980s, about a decade away before the Soviet Union collapsed.
Much like Witold, the nation grapples with envisioning a future bereft of its matriarchal figures, shackled by the chains of Communism. Corruption festers with systemic incentives, mirroring the very ethical crossroads Witold faces.
Occasionally poetic in the use of the camera, not unlike some of his later compatriots such as Kieslowski, The Constant Factor is ultimately about knowing and staying true to one’s moral compass.
The title, an ode to the ‘science’ of existence, beckons one to strive for constancy amid life’s fluidity—to stand unwavering, not in obstinacy, but in resolute defiance within an ever-shifting world.
Grade: B+
Trailer:
Music:
Eternality Tan 