A Lesson in a Dead Language

A Polish Psychological screenplay based on Andrzej Kuśniewicz's novel "A Lesson in a Dead Language". The story and the film take place in the last months of World War I, in a small Galician town. The protagonist, a young Lieutenant of Lancers of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Alfred Kiekeritz, due to an advanced case of tuberculosis is shifted to the rear of the front. In the little town of Galicia he serves as commander of the firing squad. He lives in a shabby little Jewish hotel where he is the only guest. Devastated and hopeless, aware that his life is coming to an end he decides to give life a new meaning. He collects works of art that he sends to his mother in Graz, keeping only a copy of "Diana of Ephesus", which he found in the ruins of the Ukrainian court. Kiekeritz is also interested in symbolism and fascinated by death. In an conversation with Lieutenant von Traut, who on his way to vacation stopped in Turka, he confesses that the most powerful, almost divine experience must be that of holding a gun on someone and being able at any time to pull the trigger. However - despite the fact that he commands the firing squad - he has not killed anyone yet. When he dies, the train station manager takes his body in a simple box coffin, in a freight train to his hometown.