AllMovie

The late, celebrated Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski) has created a downbeat but emotionally harrowing, magic realist tale in this film about a fictional couple whose lives are taken over by events in Poland in the turbulent, early 1980s. Antoni Zyro (Jerzy Radziwilowicz), a Polish attorney, dies in an automobile accident. For the next several weeks, his spirit watches what happens to his wife Ula (Grazyna Szapolowska) and his cause, and directs her course of action. Ula decides that her love for her dead husband can only be expressed by hiring an attorney to defend Antoni's clients - one of the most prominent is a hero of the Gdansk strikes, accused of creating the Polish solidarity movement and fighting for the cause of democratic labor. As the lawyer defends the worker who fights for his right to organize a union, Ula is still struggling with the loss of her husband -- and losing her battle to go on.