Piotr Trzaskalski’s unique film about a levitating circus performer who feels only heaviness in his private life comes with a bracingly bleak ambience, splashed with a little magic realism.

Visually haunting and profoundly moving, Piotr Trzaskalski’s second feature, The Master, impressively (and rather daringly) mixes Eastern European bleakness with Fellini-esque invention and a touch of magic realism. Structured at once as both a road movie and a portrait of a disenfranchised man seeking redemption, Trzaskalski’s movie unfolds smoothly as its main character, a Russian émigré known only as The Master (Konstantin Lavronenko) willfully isolates himself…even as he unconsciously forms a makeshift family. The Master is a renowned knife-thrower with strange supernatural powers, working for carnivals and circuses throughout Poland. When he finds himself fired following a drunken escapade, The Master converts his mobile home into a traveling one-man sideshow, “Knife Circus,” picking up a drifter (Jacek Braciak) and a prostitute (Teresa Branna), and later the prostitute’s French lesbian friend (Aurelia Georges), along the way. When he falls unexpectedly into a relationship with a young woman named Anna (Monika Buchowiec) and her brother, emotions overtake The Master and his fellow lost souls, and secrets and admissions are soon revealed. All of them have been imprisoned by denied feelings and repressed guilt. In a way, they all finally learn to levitate, just as The Master does in his act. The film is a visual triumph, thanks to cinematographer Piotr Sliskowski who shoots everything through mists, fog and damp weather, all encased by swirling smoke that you can almost smell. Wojciech Lemanski contributed the music score that heightens the sad ambience of the piece. -- Joe Baltake