Disappointment for a huge fan!

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

I thought "Possession" was a brilliant feat of surreality, the absolutely dis-harmonic atmosphere in that film was amazing. So what about Diabel then? Does it deserve being lauded with praise? In my humble opinion, not at all. First of all, the story the filmmaker is trying to tell here is inanely boring in itself ( who f**king cares about the plight of the polish unless you happen to be polish yourself? ). Second it does not help masking it up in code and symbolic speech, does not make it more interesting to watch, just more pretentious. Third, the actors felt like no more than empty props, vacant carriers existing only as receptacles for the underlying message, spouting a pompous, quasi-philosophical dialog, displaying a never ending theatrical behavior which was nauseating. Last, but by no means least, the so called violence on display here was meek, nothing to write home about. In short, if you want an absolute bore-fest; a whole lot of screaming and pushing, flailing of arms and legs, and violence that your Christian grandmother safely could watch, then this is the film for you. What a bucket full of pretentious p**s!!!

Depravity, violence, a world permanently tipped off balance.Near the end our halfmad protagonist asks someone else if he sees the world ugly because of his illness or because it is. The other replies that the world is filled with beauty, flowers, fruit, women, then reasons that he cannot adequately describe it. Instead he will dance about it.His dance is not beautiful though, it's a wild spasmodic flailing of arms like we're seeing an epileptic suffer a seizure.Diabel is that dance.Superficially an allegory on how revolutions become mired in distraction - the political hedonism of power? - and how Poland has been used and abused by so many, deeper we find the same frightful pantomime that made Possession such a terrifying beast: inner soul made visible.Slight problem is that he does not abstract enough to hit that bedrock were every image becomes multi-layered utterance of different cosmii. Characters remain pieces of the allegoric jigsaw, pawns in a game. There is not enough emptiness from life to pour into.

In Poland, a mysterious man comes to a chaotic convent to bring to Warsaw the nobleman political prisoner Jakub (Leszek Teleszynski) that imprisoned in the dungeons. The stranger requests the list of fellow conspirators to Jakub and abducts a nun to travel with Jakub in his journey back home. When he arrives in his destroyed house, he sees his father dead; his sister abused and insane; his mother in a brothel; and his girlfriend pregnant and living with his former best friend. Jakub becomes deranged and using a razor delivered by the stranger, he kills each sinner, in an irrational period of chaos and moral degradation. "Diabel" is a messy, pointless and violent journey to insanity. The writer and director Andrzej Zulawski makes a dreadful film, with a screenplay that does not tell the milestone when the story takes place. In accordance with the DVD cover, the period is 1793, during the invasion of Poland by the Prussian army. The performances are histrionic and theatrical, and the violence is stupid with the only intention of shocking the audience. My vote is four.Title (Brazil): "Diabel"

The action of "Diabel" takes place in January 1793 during the year Prussian troops entered Poland.The Devil(brilliant Wojciech Pszoniak clad entirely in black) goes the prison of the monastery and takes a young nobleman Jakub(Leszek Teleszyński)along with a nun.Would-be regicide,clearly stunned by torture Jakub comes back in the company of a nun to see his family,but a meeting with parents,siblings,a friend and his girlfriend only intensifies obsession and bloodlust.The stranger gives him the razor to and tells "cleanse." James decides to settle accounts with their loved ones who have plunged into debauchery and moral betrayal and is losing the feeling of reality."Diabel" was banned by Polish communist regime during 1972-1988.It features some wonderfully surreal scenes and there is plenty of sleaze and bloody violence to enjoy.The castration with a rusty razor blade will certainly upset some male viewers.8 out of 10.