Thanks for the memories!

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Much like the short films and feature debut of David Lynch—hell, throw in his last release Inland Empire too—Belarusian writer/director Grzegorz Cisiecki's Dym is both stunning visually and experimental in its story structure and motives. It begins with a young man, shirtless, moving away from the flowing clouds out his window to the corner table of his desolate room, sitting down and pressing play on the old Sanyo tape recorder in his hands. From here it all goes into the surreal madness the film's tagline foreshadows, showing vignettes of a balding man in a car backseat feeding on something juicy with a hint of humiliation once our lead, now dressed in a trench coat, approaches him; a brothel shrouded in a smoky haze of drugs, anonymity, and sexuality; and the brighter, quieter moments of the nameless gentleman and the woman he loves.Many may ask the question, "What does it all mean?" And to that I reply, "Anything you want." Cisiecki could very well have made a piece so personal that it touches him at his core, but what its meaning is to him is meaningless to how it affects you. The duration may leave you in a state of utter confusion—perhaps even anger at its incomprehensibility or in your own inability to understand—but if just one frame hits you with a powerful blow to your soul, well then the film is a success. For me there were many gorgeous instances burned into my mind, from the mesmerizing beauty of a girl at the end, covering her face with her hands and in turn her hair, sticking in place, seeming to be a shot played back in reverse; the bordello scene of danger and fear on behalf of the lead, with its masks, its brazen edits with malicious intent, and the red-tinted view of a balcony above with the feeding man, this time with hair and a beard, smiling oddly with the girl he's chosen; and the innocent look of the same actor in the car's backseat, the embarrassment of his actions left unpunished.It is that shame that sticks with me the most in my understanding of the piece. To me, it is a story of the death of love and the tearstained shame of those a broken-hearted soul attempts to capture in order to fill the void left. Here is a man who has lost his soulmate, whether from death, a break-up, or a myriad of other possibilities, that has just awoken from a night of empty passion with a woman he barely knows. Taking his recorder—containing the last remnants of the girl he once spent a day in the park with, lying together, hands clasped, staring at the sky—he tries desperately to remember happier times. But the static we hear play back amidst the haunting score by Aleksandr Poroch and Rashid Brocca, doing their best Badalamenti, mixes together the joys of complete glimpses and the horrors of disjointed darkness from the abyss he has begun to wade in, barely keeping afloat. The surreal moments of blood, sex, and tears are the pain of his soul and his heart—the muscle that I could infer is what the man in the car has been eating, he being the facilitator of his night of carnal pleasure devoid of emotion.I could be way off base—I almost hope I am so as to take from Dym what is purely mine and mine alone. But this is what I beg anyone who decides to watch to do. Go in with an open mind and discover something about yourself through its visuals—there is no speech for the seven-minute runtime—not for meaning in the pictures themselves. Cisiecki gives us the line that this is "The story of the person who became the captive of surrealistic madness," but perhaps the person he speaks of is you the viewer. All the actors, Grzegorz Golaszewski, Bartlomiej Nowosielski, Oriana Soika, Marta Szumiel, and others, are wonderful, yet, in the end, they are merely vessels for our own demons to inhabit in a story personal to us. The lead is you; the curly haired girl, your love; the new woman, all those that have come and gone, never comparing to the one and only. We all live inside the smoky haze; it's only when it clears that we should ever take pause and take a stand to not let the chance pass us by.

A young man is seen as the film opens looking through his apartment window. Since the viewer has no idea of what this man is watching, we have no way of knowing what is going through his mind. The cassette player Edgar turns on, triggers something in his mind, perhaps about a not too distant past that is clear in his mind. Perhaps the love affair with a gorgeous creature that evidently is over, is painful for him to recall. The protagonist, Edgar, might be young, but what we see of him tells us of a life that has experienced so much for his short years. His world is populated with characters that have, at one time, or another, been key factors for his present state.The story is told in crisp images. "Dym" is an enigmatic short film by Polish director Grzegorz Cisiecki, who shows a style that recalls some of the best films of this genre. "Dym", or "Smoke", in its eight minutes running time, shows us a talented director that needs to be seen more often. The remarkable feat in this brief movie is the way Mr. Cisiecki got wonderful ensemble work from his cast. The cinematographer, David Rymar, captured every nuance in the film with his camera. The music composed by Aleksandr Porach with the help of Rashid Brocca, set the right mood for our enjoyment.Grzegorz Golaszewski, the young actor at the center of the story, does a marvelous job in conveying what Mr. Cisiecki wanted to achieve.

Smoke (Also known as Dym) is a rather compelling short film about a man recollecting his life with a tape recorder, such as being a chauffeur for a strange bald man, moments of passion with his girlfriend, and the dark, and chilling fantasies he suffers from.The film's atmosphere and editing style seem influenced by works of directors like Christopher Nolan and David Lynch, and that's never a bad thing. The short is somewhat enigmatic, but sometimes the best way to really look at a film is without knowing much. It's surrealistic, and frightening atmosphere and complete lack of dialogue is put to inspired use, providing scenes that are very chilling. Even if a few of these scenes overstay their welcome, it's only for brief periods. The best part of this dark and ambitious project is the cinematography by Dawid Rymar, who uses expert influences of work by fantastic cinematographers like Emmanuel Lubezki and Wally Pfister.I don't quite think it's perfect, but I like it enough to give it an 8/10. A rewatch will be needed to see if my opinion heightens.

I didn't make head nor tail of this Polish short film, but I liked it. 'Smoke (2007)' exists in its own little world, a private nightmare of a drug-induced haziness, the stench of opium hanging thickly in the air. The film's low budget is occasionally apparent – you can usually pick it from smoothness of the camera movement – but this is nevertheless an excellently constructed film, especially in its use of vivid, evocative colour, and a disconcerting soundtrack. Director Grzegorz Cisiecki samples the work of masters: there's the astute blending of dream and memory, reminiscent of Maya Deren or David Lynch; the haunting sexual ceremony of Kubrick's 'Eyes Wide Shut (1999)'; the fragmented and often disturbing imagery of 'Un Chien Andalou (1929).' Shades of Caligula rear their head in several sequences, in which decadent men and women gather around a grotesque meal, as though in the prelude to a perverse sexual event. The surreal images appear to revolve around a central figure, a young man silently brooding in a dark room. A woman near the window, slowly undressing, goes unnoticed. Why such a vast emotional distance between these two people? Is it jealousy? Disloyalty? Is the young man simply imagining these perverse acts of sexual betrayal, or do his suspicions have grounding?