Indeed, between Malick’s “ Song to Song” and Bertrand Bonello’s soon-to-be-released “Nocturama,” about a gang of young terrorists running amok in Paris, there isn’t much that “All These Sleepless Nights” has to offer, thematically or formally, that you won’t see elsewhere in cinemas this year. Marczak’s certainly got one hell of an eye-nary a minute goes by when he isn’t producing some new, formally thrilling image or montage of his heroes in transit, unglued from traditional morality and ritual-but his tricks are nothing new. The steadicam-based shooting and cut-heavy editing are on loan from Terrence Malick, who uses it to divine more interesting truths about the soul than are unearthed here. Whether the aesthetics strike your fancy will determine your patience with these three and the milieu of non-stop decadence they occupy. The story is a more general, ephemeral question of modern youth, sex, drugs and romance. The plot can be summed up thusly: Three Polish twenty-somethings go to an endless series of parties, fall in and out of love, and make each other jealous. Put in a less confusing and circuitous fashion: if this movie were fiction instead of documentary, would anyone care? The nagging question is whether or not the film stands tall on aesthetic or moral grounds, divorced of its purpose as a conversation piece. The film need not exist for any greater purpose than to raise said questions. It’s important to state up front that, objectively speaking, “All These Sleepless Nights” is a fascinating work and the thorny edges that will stick to you after its concluded are point enough. So few films ask anything of their audience, let alone anything as pressing about the nature of fiction and reality. Michal Marczak’s “All These Sleepless Nights” raises about a hundred questions, each more interesting and potentially troubling than the last.
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