Diksha Sundriyal
Netflix’s ‘Feedback’ is a crime drama unlike any you might have seen before. The show delves into the psyche of a man named Marcin, looking for his son, Piotr, who mysteriously disappeared following a meeting that the father doesn’t remember. The investigation, which he conducts outside of the official police inquiry, leads Marcin down a dark and dangerous path as he discovers his son’s secrets.
The investigation is accompanied by flashbacks, which shed light on Marcin’s background, especially his relationship with Piotr. For Marcin, his past holds a lot of importance, and he keeps talking about how he used to play in a famous band and wrote their most famous song. Naturally, one becomes curious about the band, the music, and whether any of it is real. SPOILERS AHEAD
Puppet Theatre and I Love You Like Russia are Entirely Fictional
‘Feedback’ (‘Informacja zwrotna’ in Polish) is based on the novel of the same name by Jakub Żulczyk. It is a fictional story that the author called an “anti-crime” story. He based parts of it on his own experience with alcoholics and alcoholism, while the other part is based on the privatization fraud in Warsaw and how residents were forcefully evicted from their homes. In all of this, the protagonist, Marcin Kania, emerges as a fictional character rooted in reality. As for his band and the song, they are completely fictional.
Played by Arkadiusz Jakubik, Marcin is presented as a person who is consumed by alcohol, and this adversely affects his life and relationships, though he doesn’t want to accept that. He has been an alcoholic for so long that the people around him don’t remember him being sober anymore. His addiction had to be rooted in something that would also set the foundation for more trouble that Marcin later lands himself in. This is where his past as a rock star comes in.
In several conversations, especially with strangers, Marcin talks about his time as the bassist in a band named Puppet Theatre. He never forgets to mention that he wrote the band’s most successful song, ‘I Love You Like Russia.’ Later, it is revealed that this wasn’t the only song Marcin wrote. In fact, most of the songs in the first album of the band were written by him, though he wasn’t credited for it for a long time because he was cheated out of it by his bandmate, Zbyszek, who wanted all the spotlight to be on him.
While it might seem like a random thing that Marcin had in the past, his connection to the band is what moves the pieces forward. His time as a rock star explains why he has such grandiose ideas of self-importance when he doesn’t seem to care even about his family. It might also be the time when he got into alcohol for the first time and was plagued by the addiction that didn’t let go of him for the next couple of decades.
The band, despite being some distant thing in Marcin’s past, comes around to change his life when he finally starts making some money from the songs he wrote and has enough to invest in the building project that Zbyszek offers him. This becomes the inception point of the trouble that eventually claims his son’s life. So, one can say that despite being in the background and a thing of the past, Marcin’s career in the rock band remains an influential presence in his life. With all this in mind, it’s clear that while the band and the song might be fictional, they pave the path for the story to turn towards things that are quite relevant in the real world.
Read More: Feedback Season 1 Ending, Explained: What Happened to Piotr?
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