The Big Animal on AllMovie

Working from a recently rediscovered script from late Polish filmmaker Krysztof Kieslowski, veteran actor and frequent Kieslowski collaborator Jerzy Stuhr directs this wry fable about intolerance and individuality. The film opens with bank clerk and clarinet enthusiast Zygmunt Sawicki (Stuhr) discovering a huge two-humped camel in his garden -- apparently left behind by a traveling circus. Though his schoolteacher wife Marysia (Anna Dymna) initially doesn't know what to make of the cud-chewing animal, Zygmunt takes an immediate shine to the beast, and takes it in. His fellow villagers also seem to take to the camel: Zygmunt is greeted warmly as he parades it around their little town, and Marysia's pupils clamor over each other to name the animal. However, the townsfolk soon grow tired and suspicious of the beast. Friends and neighbors start to avoid the Sawickis, and children are forbidden to go near the animal.