Janina Duszejko, an elderly woman, lives alone in the Klodzko Valley where a series of mysterious crimes are committed. Duszejko is convinced that she knows who or what is the murderer, but nobody believes her.
Pam says:
As a dog owner/lover and all ’round animal person, this film was a tough watch from the beginning to the end. We meet Duszejko (Agnieszka Mandat) one idyllic morning in the country being awakened by her beautiful Australian Shepherds (who look a lot like my Aussie). Going off to work and leaving the “girls”outside to run and play in their carefree world, Duszejko returns to find her dogs are missing. Gathering her young students, she organizes a search party in the dark, deep in the woods, which doesn’t fly with the school administrator the next day. She’s skating on thin ice, but we don’t know why. This is just one of the mysteries of Duszejko’s background that is sprinkled into the story line.
Duszejko,we learn is no friend to many of the townsmen who hunt and kill not for survival but for the thrill of the count. As these men disregard the seasonal hunting dates, her anger rises, but her hysterics fall on deaf ears from the mayor and police chief to the local clergy. However, there are a few people who see the world through her eyes, all of them misfits in some way or with a sordid past to bury. The villains in this film are many as Wnetrzak (Borys Szyc) leads a brothel and tortures animals caged and injured. It’s disturbing to see these images to say the least as his cruelty starts with innocent animals and bleeds into his cruel behavior toward women.
On the flip side of this is Duszejko’s unusual connection with Mother Nature and her animals. Beautifully set in the hills and lush forest, it’s a calming sensation, balancing the horrors of death. We see the deer and boar comfortably inhabiting the same environment and there’s even a little spark of a love story with Duszejko and her neighbor Swietopelk (Wiktor Zborowski) and a traveling entomologist Boros, (Miroslav Krobot), trying to save an endangered beetle. But as the “hunters” begin to go missing and then found dead, Mother Nature appears to be seeking vengeance according to Duszejko who pleads with the powers that be to make the cruelty stop. She, of course, is the primary suspect, but she, with her indepth knowledge of astrology, attempts to educate the powers that be and finds herself being dismissed as crazy.
“Spoor,” as the title indicates, is a hunt or tracking which is ultimately what happens in this crime thriller. It’s a haunting tale that beautifully captures the balance of nature and the importance of environmentalism, but after the first half of the film, the repetition of the horrors of man are over-the-top and unnecessary. We understand Duszejko’s plight and the atrocities she witnesses. It is my most sincere hope that the footage capturing the hunting and killing of a deer and a boar are CGI, but I am unsure and these images, like the film, will haunt me.
This atmospheric film with characters who feel that they’ve been plucked from a village in Poland to play the parts clearly delivers the intended message. And while the story takes an unexpected turn to add that interesting twist toward the end, the violence and ultimate resolution just doesn’t set well.
2 1/2 Stars
