Polish director Agniezka Holland's new miniseries, "Burning Bush," playing in New York at the Film Forum and streaming online at Fandor, is deliberately not epic. Holland has never prized spectacle over incident. There are no matte painting landscapes teeming with extras; no big speeches that give us the moral with a bow tied around it; no easy answers and few satisfying endings. Her films are set in an unfair past, which would be all blue, grey and black if it weren't for all the bloodshed.
"Burning Bush" may concern dozens of characters over the course of many months during a tempestuous time in a city under siege, but the emphasis is on people in cramped rooms, trying and failing to make sense of what's happening outside their windows. Time and again, characters look out at the world and see only danger, whether because of the men parked outside their houses in the small hours of the morning or because a dark figure is trying to open a locked door. Even more frequently, Holland's characters find themselves in mirrors; their own reflections the only thing that grounds them. She minimizes sprawling political conflict to tired faces and the seemingly insignificant objects and gestures that give life meaning.