You know the story. The dirt-under-the-fingernails kid who looks at the smog-choked horizon and decides he’s going to be the one holding the briefcase instead of the plow. It’s the American Dream, right? Only this is Poland in the wake of WWII, and the ladder is made of socialist bureaucracy, party favors and a soul-crushing urbanization that makes a concrete slab look like a warm blanket.

Grzegorz Królikiewicz (Through and Through) takes the Citizen Kane blueprint, shreds it, and feeds it through a Cold War meat grinder. We follow Michał Toporny, a peasant boy who climbs the social mountain until he’s a high-ranking official. But Królikiewicz isn’t interested in a polite rise and fall biopic. He wants to show you the gears grinding the human spirit into dust.

Cinematographer Zbigniew Rybczyński (who did the dizzying lens work for the cult slasher Angst) turns every frame into a psychic battlefield. The compositions are so original that they feel like they’re trying to escape the screen. It’s all wide angles and distorted perspectives that make the city feel like a beautiful, sterile prison.

We’re dropped into the life of Michal Toporny (Franciszek Trzeciak), a peasant boy who decides that the mud of the farm isn’t for him. He starts climbing the social ladder of post-war Poland with a speed that would give his ancestors vertigo. But this isn’t a local boy makes good story. Instead, it’s a local boy burns every bridge odyssey.

Michal ditching his rural roots isn’t just about moving to the city. He discards his wife and son like yesterday’s newspaper to marry Wieslawa (Beata Tyszkiewicz), a woman who represents the socially upstanding life he craves. He eventually claws his way to the top of a mining company, but the view from the peak is pretty grim. Wieslawa gets tired of being married to a man who’s more in love with his career than her, leading to an affair with a younger engineer that hits like a cold splash of water.

We fast-forward to Michal not as the young and vital man we have watched, but instead as an old and sick person trying to glue together the shattered pieces of a relationship with the son he abandoned decades ago.

The Dancing Hawk (or Tańczący jastrząb) is a brutal reminder that the higher you fly, the more everything below you starts to look like a target—until you realize you’re the one falling. It’s ambitious, it’s ugly, and it’s essential viewing for anyone who thinks climbing the ladder doesn’t require leaving a few layers of skin behind.

Extras on the Radiance Films Blu-ray, which has a 4K restoration by Filmoteka Narodowa, include an interview with critic Carmen Gray; two short films by cinematographer Zbigniew Rybczyński; a reversible sleeve featuring original artwork by Jerzy Czerniawski and Andrzej Klimowski; a limited edition booklet featuring new writing by critic Piotr Kletowski and it comes in full-height Scanavo packaging with removable OBI strip, leaving packaging free of certificates and markings. You can get it from MVD.