Estetyka fragmentu.Przestrzenne alegorie w filmie "Kucharz, złodziej, jego żona i jej kochanek" Petera Greenawaya
The aesthetics of a fragment. Spatial allegories in Peter Greenaway’s "The cook, the thief, his wife and her lover"

Summary/Abstract: The author argues that the spatial structures in Peter Greenaway’s "The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover" are a major factor for its allegorical reading. The high degree of formal organization of the film – usually referred to by the critics as theatrical – creates the fictional, sealed off universe of the film, that is ostensibly separated from the world available in everyday experience. Reflections on the isolated spatial universe created by Greenaway in "The Cook… " are used in the reconstruction of the mechanism of creation of allegorical space together with meanings evoked by that space. In addition, the author argues that the use of a variety of formal strategies that prevent the viewer from gaining a foothold within the world presented, also activates an allegorical perception of the film. In conclusion, the author of the article claims that Greenaway does not – as claimed by many of his critics – play autotelic and self-reflexive intellectual, postmodern, intertextual games, but presents a penetrating diagnosis of the political and cultural realities of the British era of Thatcherism.

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