Critical Essay | Critical Essay by John Coleman

Critical Essay by John Coleman

When it arrives—and, by some minor miracle of audiophonics, it does—the throaty clamour indicated by the title of Jerzy Skolimowski's latest excursion into English-speaking cinema is unlike most promises: quite up to expectations, one hell of a howl. Thus giving away the biggest, single effect in The Shout, I have made a choice which clearly reflects on the film as a whole: as a whole, it is a hole. Taken at what remove I know not … from a source of general repute, it comes out as about the craziest cinematic structure in a fair while. Skolimowski—too long absent from our screens—is an expatriate Pole of enormous talent, mostly leaning into the surreal. Whether he has genius is something else and this self-inflating doubt seems to beset even his better movies. One thinks especially of the anglicised side of his career and, accordingly, of Deep End, where he gave us...
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