James Hogg’s celebrated 1824 genre-bending novel could almost have been written as a source text for a Wojciech Has film. In a wittily cinematic substitute for the book’s manuscript being discovered by grave robbers nestling within its author’s coffin, the similarly exhumed corpse of Robert (Piotr Bajor) comes back to life to guide us through his traumatic life story, which includes regular visitations from a Doppelgänger, possibly the reincarnation of the devil himself, who persuades Robert to commit vile crimes on his behalf, including the murder of close relatives.
