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A man without a memory and a woman whose success hides emptiness grapple with life in dystopian future Warsaw and are drawn into the 20th-century past. But such an escape may not be allowed. A unique love story unfolding under omnipresent crisis and totalitarian oversight, crossing between collapsing near future and Soviet history, The Man with the Magic Box nods to the classic while remaining very much itself. The pleasure of viewing, as much as in the mysterious storyline and strange, perfect performances by the leads, is in the subtle, meticulous detail of the world. Here, people are relentlessly cut off from one another, terrorism is either inescapable or a real-estate development tool, advertising uncomfortably personal, and all aspects of life metered by a credit chip implanted in the hand. At turns bleak, absurd, unsettling, and oddly affecting, the film defies synopsis while advancing with effortless imagination. A future cult favorite in the making.
