“Coniunctio Oppositorum”: On the Goal of Journey Into the Depth of “The Third Part of the Night”

Agnieszka Morstin-Popławska

Abstract

Agnieszka Morstin-Popławska undertakes an attempt to interpret Andrzej Zuławski's film as a text of culture that actualizes the myth of apocalypse: the myth is dealt with as a continually renewed model story clarifying the sense of events taking place in the story. The image of a disaster come true is interpreted as one of the crisis of the canon of culture; its destruction - according to the apocalyptic message - is however supposed to lead towards a revival of the world of values. The protagonist, who shows traces of ancient and Christian descent, embarks on the mission. The depiction of the hero's journey through the night-enveloped world of war destruction is subordinated to the logic of (Victor Turner's) liminal experience. According to Morstin-Popfawska’s iine ofreasoning , the successive phases of this experience take place on the plane of a spiral labyrinth, the form organizing the space of the represented world. In addition to this interpretation of the labyrinthine-apocalyptic vision, the film fits the tradition of baroque with its concepts of a world and God in motion.