March 28, 2024

Hardkor Disco – showing at the Kinoteka Polish Film Festival

Hardkor Disco follows a few days in the life of Marcin, a psychopath on a mission that’s as unclear to him as it is to us. He’s the “odd-duck” rebel romantic brooder of pop culture idolatry and he’s also a bored-of-life murderer for whom even the most extreme adrenaline devices have grown stale. As it has been for Marcin, the film tempts viewers with the allure of rapid-fire sex and violence but then aims to reach a higher state, and to make its point, by burning slowly instead.

Early in the film, Marcin meets a young girl, Ola, who along with her friends is in constant need of action. Marcin quickly gets involved in the lives of her and her family where he broods, he nods his head, he kills, he steals, and he looks off into the distance, but gets no closer to finding either a solution to his boredom or redemption. Life in the fast lane, it seems, isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Sadly, everyone seems too self-involved to notice.

While Marcin’s clearly dangerous, offering no more in the way of charm than a nod and a smile, for the characters of Hardkor Disco that’s enough to let them turn a blind eye to his transparent sociopathology. Through him, they ignite or reignite their secret desires and use cigarette lighters to set their moral compasses on fire. And, lacking more than just the barest of humanity, Marcin’s always actively complicit in their demises. He’s the devil in a hoodie and he tricks them all with cool. His slow calm offers the perfect foil to everyone else’s rush for life.

In one scene Ola’s family is too busy chatting about themselves to notice a knife hanging out of Marcin’s pocket for the majority of the scene. They then criticize society’s current tendency of avoiding high art in favor of the high-octane distraction circus of modernity. So, in spite or perhaps because of Hardkor Disco’s titular promises of pulp goodies, Hardkor Disco gleefully teases the viewer by withholding on action and glamorous vice and instead opts for slow pacing and lengthy shots of nature.

Hardkor Disco takes its time. Instead of bombarding the viewer with ninety minutes of plot development and strobe light effects, it offers minimalism on a platter and begs the viewer to savor it. One lengthy one-shot sex sequence even takes place in front of a poster for the Jim Jarmusch’s minimalist classic Stranger than Paradise. The following scene the characters discuss the merits of another Jim Jarmusch film.

All of this is not to say that Hardkor Disco doesn’t clearly understand the attraction of say a Michael Bay styled slo-motion explosion. It clearly does but it just won’t give it for you. Instead, it’ll offer snow falling and Marcin tossing a Molotov cocktail in slow motion but will then change the scene before the explosion ever ignites. The film is complete with the classic attractions of Hollywood, sex, drugs and violence – it just won’t deliver them with the classic effect.

by Jonathan Glick

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