 | MOVIE DETAILS • Name: The Erlprince • Year: 2016 • Country: Poland • Director: Kuba Czekaj • Main cast: Staszek Cywka, Agnieszka Podsiadlik, Sebastian Lach • Runtime: 101 minutes • Production company: Stowarzyszenie Filmowcow Polskich, Dolnoslaski Konkurs Filmowy, Odra Film • TRAILER
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If you like conventional films, perhaps it is better to avoid The Erlprince. Because yes, it is a very strange movie, with very chaotic narrative and where things are not concluded. But yet, I think it is an interesting movie, with some challenging concepts, that sadly at the end drifted too much into disorder.
The movie is written and directed by Kuba Czekaj, and starred by Agnieszka Podsiadlik and Sebastian Lach, who already starred his previous and first film Baby Bump (2015). Together with them, a debutant in a feature film Staszek Cywka brings a great performance of the main role, the troubled physics genius teenager. The movie deals with the concept of parallel universes, the limitations of the body, the mind and the soul, and tries to take it to the fields of physics, not so much in spiritual terms. That plot description is what called my attention for this film. But after the first minutes where the two main characters of mother and son are introduced, the action gets bizarre. Here is when the audience starts to get lost, because the movie is seriously complicated to follow.
The Erlprince brings on the table the eternal idea of what happens when we die. The mother wants the boy to run for this science competition, with the first prize of 10.000 euros. But the boy is not interested in money or dealing with the problems from the adults. A very gifted mind in the body of a 15 years old boy. No matter how smart you are, but when you are at the age of puberty, hormones start to dance the can-can and rebellion towards your parental figures is a constant.
The movie proposes a good set of questions. I assume the filmmakers wanted the audience to bring out their own conclusions, to talk to our inner self. Those are the key questions that have been wandering in the heads of human beings for centuries. But, at least to me, the chaotic narrative of the film didn’t help much to get in the spirits for big philosophical developments.
I would recommend The Erlprince to the audience members interested in challenging titles and philosophical debates. But note that this movie is not for everyone. Be ready for what you are going to watch.
RATE: 5/10
IMDB URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5688178
