The Constant Factor

Witold (Tadeusz Bradecki), a young man in Poland, keeps hitting the same wall: colleagues who scheme against him at work, and hospital officials who ignore his dying mother (Zofia Mrozowska). Krzysztof Zanussi follows him as he tries to find a code of conduct that holds still, the way his late father's mountaineering once seemed to. The film is about how hard it is to stay decent when everyone around you has settled for less.