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.
