In the sunset of his life and aware of the inevitable – this is how Marián
Varga, the iconic character of Slovak big beat, is seen and portrayed up
close and personal by an aspiring Slovak directress, Soňa Maletzová who
sketches a portrait of an artist as an old man. “We are here for a moment,
by accident,” says the staunch admirer of Albert Camus while puffing from
his inseparable cigar. For some time, he tried to replace them with electronic
cigarettes but when he learned about his deadly diagnosis and poor
prospects, the doctors didn’t even bother to reprimand him. Ingenuously
editing archive footage, the film condenses various decades of Varga’s life
and career into integral music numbers in which the same composition
echoes through interpretations from various periods. His mortal frame along
perhaps with his style of playing and temperament changes visibly; however,
somewhere beneath Varga remains admirably unchanged, artistically and
humanly consistent.