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...