Waszyński's The Dybbuk

Michał Waszynski's Dybuk, reckognised as a masterpiece of European interwar cnema, even described as "the most important film in Polish cinematography", is a peculiar work, whose extraordinary form has haunted viewers' imagination around the world for seventy years. The film conveys an image of spiritual yearning, sublimity, mystical passion and surging emotions with hypnotic power rarely seen in cinema. The charm of The Dybbuk - firmly rooted in the inassesible world of Hassidic beliefs and traditions - paradoxically lies in universality of the desires it portrays. Depisted in poignantway, the lot of Khonen and Leah does not let anyone remain oat the level of culturally oreinted observation. The gestures, the expressions of bodies and facestouch us deep inside, by such means the passed, distant and unknownis made close and familiar. Would then the dybbuk cast a spell upon contemporary viewer, in a meaning given to it by Kabbalah master Isaan Ashkenazi Luria - as the one who brings consolation?