Adam Miauczynski (Marek Kondrat) is a middle-aged literature professor, divorced, with a teenage son. Writer/director Marek Koterski's dark comedy Day of the Wacko follows Adam over the course of a long, typically unpleasant day as he deals with his noisy neighbors, his overbearing mother (Janina Traczykówna), his apathetic son (Michal Koterski), his bitchy ex-wife (Joanna Sienkiewicz), his rudely flatulent students, and, most debilitating of all, his own obsessive-compulsive behavior, and his immobilizing despair over the state of his life and the world around him. All the while, he reminisces about the woman he calls his great lost love, Ela (Monika Donner-Trelinska), and fantasizes about seeing her again. Reaching a fever pitch of depressed paranoia, Adam decides to travel to take a train to the beach to find some peace. After a harrowing trip, during which he's forced to share a compartment with a motley assortment of obnoxious fools, he arrives at the sea and lies out in the sand, hoping for a moment's tranquility as he continues his ongoing internal monologue, analyzing the failures of his life and his world. Day of the Wacko was nominated for a slew of Polish Film Awards, and won Best Actor (Kondrat) and Best Screenplay (Koterski). It was also shown at the 2003 Berlin International Film Festival, and was released straight-to-video in the U.S. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide
Review by All Movie Guide
All Movie Guide
lost interest.
An uneven and downbeat blend of lowbrow humor, literary character drama, and crude sociopolitical satire, Marek Koterski's Day of the Wacko would be a lot more palatable if it weren't for the underlying whiff of misogyny. The film is centered on Adam Miauczynski's (Marek Kondrat) bitter middle-aged crank. Kondrat has played the filmmaker's alter ego before, both in Koterski's debut, Dom Wariatów (The Madhouse) and his 1995
Nic Smiesznego (Nothing Funny), so he's clearly gotten pretty good at it, injecting a wounded intelligence into the character's sad-sack existence. The entire film takes place inside Miauczynski's head, and it's not always a pleasant place to be. To make matters worse, too often Kondrat's narration describes what we're watching, as though not trusting the audience to get the jokes. And by not allowing us to see beyond Miauczynski's narrow parameters, Day of the Wacko seems to take his own dim view of women, who are either droning naggers or incoherently screeching idiots. On the other hand, it's refreshing that the film is so unsentimental about its irritable protagonist, and there are a couple of wonderfully funny moments in the film, as when the cynophobic Miauczynski waits in his train compartment, ruefully anticipating the arrival of a dog he's spotted outside "like a convict waiting for execution." In the end, even the fantasy of his "one true love" offers Miauczynski no escape from his despair, and this does lend the film a certain poignancy. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide