Tag: Polish

Our dirty questions to Agnieszka Holland

Posted on by Paul Risker

Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland has looked to the plight of suffering in WW2 in Europa Europa (1990) and In Darkness (2011), and the struggle for liberation of the Czech people in her miniseries Burning Bush (2013). She returns to the past with her recently released film, Charlatan (2020; pictured below), based on the true story of infamous Czech healer Jan Mikolášek (Ivan Trojan), who with his uncanny knack for urinary diagnosis, won favour and fortune treating prominent Nazi and Communist figures. Falling out of favour with the current Communist regime, a show trial threatens to pry open his secrets, including the illicit love affair between he and his assistant František Palko (Juraj Loj), whose fate hangs in the balance.

In conversation with DMovies, Holland discussed the cinema of today versus her youth, the conventional dramaturgy of television, the unknown journey of a film, and accepting her work.

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Paul Risker – ‘What we are’ versus ‘who we feel we are’ can often be out of sync. I’ve spoken with directors who say that it took a number of films before they felt they could call themselves a filmmaker. Do you feel that you can call yourselves filmmakers?

Agnieszka Holland – It was a completely different time when I was deciding to become a film director, or a filmmaker. The cinema was in a different place, and I was 15 when I made the decision. It was the mid-1960s and the cinema was the most innovative, original and personal artistic medium. To be a filmmaker was to call yourself an artist – it meant that you tried to express yourself in some cinematic and artistic form. Of course, a commercial cinema existed in the United States, especially Hollywood, but there was the idea of the cinema as an accessible medium, an attractive way to express complex, poetic, emotional and intellectual content.

Today we’re in a different place, and the kind of cinema that pushed me to dream about being a filmmaker is now rare. The ambitions of personal cinema exists of course, but it became a festival niche. The mainstream in the theatrical cinema, the middle type of cinema practically disappeared, and all moved to more ambitious television. Sometimes it breaks the rules, but the majority are conventional, and it has to be to attract a global audience.

To be a filmmaker today, in the best sense means you’re a good craftsman, or you create some kind of visual art which is on the border between modern art and cinema.

PR – Did you feel you were a filmmaker once you’d made a film, or was it a feeling that gradually developed?

AH – I didn’t think about myself as a filmmaker. You become a filmmaker when you’re making films on a regular basis. I saw myself more as a director, or as I say, it’s someone that pretends to be an artist. I was thinking about expressing important things in a personal way, not making movies, but of course I was at the same time making movies. I became a filmmaker from the moment I did my first professional film.

PR – Has the experience of being on set changed, or the familiarity of the process dulled your passion?

AH – I still like the process and every time it’s new for me. When I’m doing television it becomes more of a routine because you have to keep to a stylistic frame that has already been established, or you have to establish it. Television is quick, but it’s hard when you’re doing a lot of night shoots, and it’s not final. Other people are taking over afterwards – producers and studios, networks and platforms. A television series, especially a long one has to be conventional because you have to do it in a way that by the end of every episode, the viewer would like to return. You have to establish a conventional dramaturgy.

You don’t know where the cinema will take you, whether it will come together in a decent way, or it will be a total failure, or something miraculous will happen. Cinema is a prototype, every film is different and so it’s much more of an exciting adventure, and this adventure mainly happens during the shooting. I’m alert and excited during the shoot, but of course I don’t like everything about the process. I don’t like waking up at 4am and spending 14 hours on set, never having enough time, but it’s where I feel alive.

PR – Interviewing director Jill Gervargizian, she remarked to me that the filmmaking process is about, “making a decision, believing in it and moving on.” Would you agree with this sentiment?

AH – I remember teaching 15 years ago, and counting for my students how many decisions I had to do each day on set as the director for a film I was making. I counted until I was bored, and there were 700 decisions in five hours or so. It’s about making decisions, and it can blind your clarity of judgement because very often you don’t know in your heart what’s the right and wrong decision. We have to pretend to become the leader of the herd.

It’s a very strange profession – a bit of stealing from and lying to other people, a bit of pretending, and suddenly being inspired by something you couldn’t predict. Of course, it needs the regular boring preparations, so it’s a very complicated job at the end of the day.

PR – Interviewing Larry Fessenden, he spoke of how a film is abandoned. Would you agree with this sentiment, or is a less harsh phrasing that it’s about being able to let go of the film?

AH – With some films you never know if you’ve concluded the process at the right time, if there wasn’t something more to do. Deciding that it’s over, that it’s accomplished is a mix of exterior needs: money, premiere and festival dates that have been set, and sometimes it’s also the feeling that you’re not inspired any longer about what you can change for the better.

What I enjoy, and the few times in my career I was lucky enough to have this opportunity, is to finish the film, to show it to the audience and afterwards have the opportunity to come back to the editing room. It’s often not possible because it costs money. Most of the time, even if at the premiere I wasn’t completely satisfied, when I watch the film one year on, I think, ‘Okay, it is what it is.’ The film is only finished when the audience see it and express their own judgement and emotions.

Charlatan is available on premium digital platforms.

The Coldest Game

Posted on by victorfraga

Russians are rude, unpleasant, unscrupulous and they have no regard for human life. They play dirty and can only win by cheating. They hate democracy. They are plain evil. On the other hand, Americans are kind, generous, honest and with a profound respect for the well-being of others. They epitomise good, here personified by the kind and avuncular Bill Pullman. This is more or less how The Coldest Game is constructed. Surprisingly, this is a Polish movie. Yet, its Polish identity is nowhere to be seen. The action does take place in Warsaw, yet the nation’s culture and language are hardly there to be seen. It could be any country. This thriller is unabashedly American, from both an aesthetic and ideological perspective.

The year is 1962. The World Chess Championship takes place in Warsaw, and the contestants are American professor Joshua Mansky (Pullman) and Russian champion Gavrylov (Evgeniy Sydikhin). Masnky has been recruited by the CIA. A Soviet agent named Gift is there to ensure that Mansky does not win, and he will resort to very unorthodox measures in order to achieve his goal. He’s the real bad guy (his name means “poison” in German, suggesting what he might be up to).

This chess game, however, is a mere ersatz competition for something far more dangerous and significant. The Soviet Union is sending ships to Cuba, and the Americans suspect that they are loaded with nuclear material. It’s the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the world is on the brink of war. On October 22nd, John F Kennedy goes on national television in order to warn Americans and the world of the imminent danger. A part of his speech is shown in the movie. As the military crisis escalates, so do tensions on the chess board.

With more twists and turns than the Transfagarasan Highway of Romania, and an incredibly overwhelming and intrusive music score, this is your conventional American thriller in pretty much every single way. The extremely convoluted plot and fast-paced narrative gets tiring after just 10 minutes. The link between chess and nuclear arms is very weak and bizarre. An unexpected cork suddenly pops into the story in order to connect the two topics. There are also plenty of random murders (by poisoning and by fire weapons), bottles of vodka (Mansky is an alcoholic), a strange glass cage inside the American Embassy and even a very efficient hypnotist during one of the chess matches. A script is a real mess. Maybe the writers would have benefited from less vodka.

The movie wraps up with an extremely urgent and pertinent message about nuclear weapons, reminding viewers of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) signed in 1987 by Reagan and Gorbachev, which was repealed by Trump and Putin earlier this year. The consequences of such irresponsible gesture could be catastrophic consequences for mankind. At least this time isn’t Russians alone that are to blame this time!

The Coldest Game showed Competition at the 23rd Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, when this piece was originally written. It’s on Netflix in February.

Kurier

Posted on by victorfraga

Hunched over a fulgent light, Jan Nowak-Jeziorański (Philippe Tłokiński) is commanded to offer some sort of documentation from the insides of his car. Jan, nonchalant in gesture and smile, turns to his pocket and shoots the advancing soldier with a bullet sharper than his quips. That Tłokiński bears a passing resemblace to OO7 incumbent Daniel Craig would suggest a tale of encouraged espionage to its audience. Tłokiński, steely eyed, blond rimmed and devastatingly handsome, is the perfect lead to star in a World War caper, steeped in the collected charm of David Niven’s A Matter of Life and Death (Michael Powell/ Emeric Pressburger, 1946).

What Jan has over James Bond was his genuine existence. Affectionately nicknamed The Messenger from Warsaw, Jan worked as an emissary, spreading himself over the commanders of Poland’s Home Army resistance movement and the Polish Government while living in exile in London, at the height of the WW2. His investigation is slow, deliberate and arguably ponderous. It’s not a perfect tribute to the real life spy, the film spends an inexplicable 15 minutes to set itself up and there are some moments that feel too much like tacked-on fan-servicing (a priggish early scene featuring the disputatiously poised Winston Churchill is groan inducing).

More happily, we can report that there are moments of claustrophobic fused tension in an atmospheric escapade, endearing in snow rimmed decor, cascading in dimly-lit neon night action scenes. Dapper, natty and focused, Tłokiński looks good with a pistol in hand, branding his weapon as romantically as he seduces the irrepressibly pretty Doris (Julie Engelbrecht). If nationality weren’t a factor, Tłokiński might make a very strong James Bond in future years. Cannily, a high proportion of the film is accomplished through spoken English, inviting a different type of audience to appreciate Polish cinema, channeling the imprint of British sixties spy craft in its cinematography.

Changing geographies suits the film. Director Władysław Pasikowski keeps the movie flowing with hotel seated conversations, cross country shoot outs and barbarous civilian line-ups. Confidently flipping from gritty determination to louche absurdism, Tłokiński cements a strong lead. The emphasis is on the individual, heroism and the pointlessness of war.

Kurier is out in cinemas across the UK from Friday, June 28th.

Life Feels Good (Chce Sie Zyc)

Posted on by victorfraga

Getting the disability biopic right can be a difficult task. Lean too hard on the struggle and it can feel exploitative, lead too hard on the sentimentality and it can feel mawkish. Life Feels Good, directed by Maciej Pieprzyca, manages to avoid these pitfalls to discover the deeply human story underneath. Depicting one Polish man’s struggle with cerebral palsy from 1987 to almost the present day, Life Feels Good is a heartwarming and uplifting tale that never softens the edges and is that much stronger for it.

We start with Young Mateusz (Kamil Tkacz) in the 1980s, visiting the doctor with his mother (Dorota Kolak). The prognosis isn’t good. Claiming to give an objective opinion about his condition, the female medic declares that Mateusz will never improve and is better off at a hospital for the mentally ill. Naturally, his mother disagrees and takes him straight home. There he stays with his two siblings and his kind father (Arkadiusz Jakubik), who may drink too much but really cares for his son and often points out to him the names of the constellations in the sky. But when his father dies, and Mateusz (now played by Dawid Ogrodnik) becomes too heavy to be carried by his mother, he has is taken to an institute for the mentally ill.

The story is a familiar one that gathers its strength from the power of its performances and the way it is framed. Maciej Pieprzyca often films in single takes, allowing the emotion of each scene to speak for itself. By not shying away from the horrific reality of not being able to walk or talk, we are invited to empathise with Mateus’s struggle. The resulting message is a simple yet profound one: don’t judge someone merely on their outward appearance.

Mateusz, who also narrates the story, is a very smart and capable lad, only he doesn’t have the right means to communicate. He is like Christy Brown, dramatised in My Left Foot (Jim Sheridan, 1989). Also, just like Daniel Day-Lewis’ character, Mateusz, as a great fascination with sex. Yes, disabled people have a libido, too. In a manner that would perhaps be crass in a conventional biopic, we are shown his obsession with women’s breasts, the camera often highlighting them from his eye-level. But women are more than just something to be ogled at here, his relationships, first in childhood and then again at the institute, giving him a brief respite from the banality of his regular life. These scenes are the best in the film, giving us levity, heart and heartbreak, often within the same short space of time.

Spanning a time when the nation went from communism to capitalism, a one-party state to fair elections, Mateusz’s struggle to communicate mirrors the nation’s own progress. This isn’t stressed in any real allegorical way (in fact, when Mateusz’s father wants to go out to celebrate, his mother tells him that he has to fix the lock) but does helps to give the film a certain historical flavour – also helped by the subtle changes in period design.

This kind of films either succeed or fall apart as a result of their central performance. Dawid Ogrodnik does a great job here of balancing solid character work with nailing the tics and behaviours of someone with cerebral palsy. Crucially he doesn’t go over-the-top with any of the mannerisms, but conveys large amounts of emotion with his eyes alone. Mateusz is a strong, intriguing character not because of his disability but despite it. By focusing on character first, and circumstance second, Ogrodnik and Pieprzyca have crafted a deeply-empathetic tale that shows the importance of always looking beyond the obvious to find what’s actually there underneath.

Life Feels Good is available on VoD in selected European countries with Walk This Way – just click here for more information.

The Last Witness

Posted on by victorfraga

Piotr Szkopiak’s film needs to be considered alongside Andrzej Wajda’s Katyn (2007). Szkopiak himself sees it as a sequel and both directors have family connections to the Katyn Massacre. However, the two films are light years apart in their approach to the story. Wajda’s film surges with action and emotion with strong visual imagery.

In the current film, this historic cover-up of what was a hideous war crime is framed in a very British thriller format. It seeks to engage an audience that likes history dished up in a palatable form, very differently from the 2007 movie. The tropes of a classic WW2 drama are all present: attractive female army officers with uniforms that fit rather well, the subtle passing of ‘black market’ meat as rationing (still enforced in 1947 Britain), gruff provisional police officers and just a touch of ‘chocolate box’ post War streets. The Polish displaced persons camp looks well sanitised. The cabbages are tilled by jaunty girls in a scene framed with impossibly white washing hanging artistically on neatly strung lines. This provides the cover for the introduction of the romance between central character journalist Stephen Underwood (Alex Pettyfer) and Jeanette (Talulah Riley). Jeanette is the wife of Mason Mitchell (Henry Lloyd-Hughes) a strict government security chief. So far, so BBC primetime drama.

Journalist Stephen follows a trail that begins with increasing suicides amongst the Polish men awaiting repatriation. This leads him via an accidental meeting with a Russian man Michael Loboda (Robert Wieckleicz) to uncover a secret that the authorities have taken great care to keep hidden.

We are drawn into Stephen’s mission to discover why Loboda is pretending to be Polish, as he steals a box containing letters and a diary from him. This material belonged to a victim of the Katyn massacre. The constantly brooding central character defies his editor Frank Hamilton (Michael Gambon) and his brother Captain John Underwood (Gwilym Lee) by arranging to interview Loboda. The Russian has been taken into hiding by Colonel Pietrowski (Will Thorp).

As the plot twists further, the scope of the cover up extends to the government repressing the truth in order to maintain diplomatic relations with Stalin. Mitchell is implicated and manipulates Jeanette into giving away Loboda’s location. Stephen’s brother is persuaded to provide his pass allowing the determined journalist access to the records that have been hidden in a London archive.

At each step the investigation is underscored with mounting music suggesting drama that is not really seen on screen. Stephen shifts documents on his desk and in a dark and noir looking archive and we are only allowed a very brief flashback to the actual event that the cover up is about. As a way into this powerful story Underwood is not a compelling enough character and we feel cheated out of hearing more from Loboda. The story provides us with an example of a politically-motivated government cover-up. Parallels can be drawn with Loboda’s murder and the journalist who is trying to bring his story to light to current alleged poisonings and our own government’s less than firm approach to the foreign powers that may be involved.

Ultimately this is a formulaic thriller with the central horror at its core not given enough weight. We know more about the British characters who hide or unearth the story than we do about the people whose story it is. Although it is a UK-Poland co-production it is tied up in a very British package and would have been better delivered in a dirty bundle with the action and pain uncovered and allowed to seep through.

The Last Witness is out in selected cinemas from Friday, August 17th.

Cold War (Zimna Wojna)

Posted on by victorfraga

This is a film so visually stunning and elegant you will be dazzled for its entire relatively short duration of just 81 minutes. The 61-year-old Polish born and UK-based director of Ida (2013) delivers yet another black and white film teeming with music and innovation. He has once again teamed up with Polish cinematographer Luzasz Zal, who – in addition to Ida – also recently signed the photography of Dovlatov (Aleksei German Jr, 2018).

The film follows singer and dancer Zula (Joanna Kulig), who has a stormy relationship with the pianist Wiktor. The story starts in Poland in the immediate aftermath of WW2, as artists are persuaded to embrace the communist ideology as vigorously as they can in their performances. The notions of folk purity and Slavic charm must prevail. They leave the country in order to tour the Iron Curtain, and they eventually elope to the West. By the time they settle in Paris, they have separated. But fate has more in store for them, and their paths inevitable cross again.

Zula and Wiktor’s relationship epitomises Europe after WW2: it’s fragmented, unstable and volatile. They are constantly seeking their identities and their allegiances, but they are simply unable to work out “where the heart is”. Home is an elusive concept. The final line of the film sums it all up (don’t worry, this is not a spoiler, I won’t disclose the context in which this happens): “Let’s go to the other side. The view is better from there”. Cold War is a film about the perpetual search for something else, and the inability to settle where you are/ with what you have. This is extremely similar to Ida, in which the later character closes the movie with the line “so, what’s next?”, expressing her frustration with what she has achieved as well as her desire to move on (or move back). These are two fine examples of “punch on the face” closing lines, comparable to Billy Wilder’s “Nobody’s perfect” of Some Like It Hot (1959).

In addition to the photography, the film’s score is a musical tour de force. The director blends dramatic folk laments with urban warbles, jazz and even rock music, and it all fits together neatly. How else could you get Adriano Celentano’s 24,000 Baci, Bill Haley and His Comets’s Rock Around The Clock, Ella Fitzgerald’s The Man I Love, plus Mexican, Russian and Mexican folk songs all in the same film? Many of the songs are performed by Zula and the other characters, and the dance numbers and equally quaint and ravishing.

The director describes his film as a “melodrama”, but I can only see this in relation to the etymology of the word (melodrama means “musical drama”). The hawkish sentimentality we normally associate with melodramas is entirely absent. The most dramatic moments of Cold War are either entirely removed or subdued (such as Wiktor’s short prison stint, and the reaction of lovers as they depart or meet again). The “Cold” in the title seems to refer to both the conflict between the East and the West and the stoic nature of the romantic battle between the two lovers. The chemistry between the two actors isn’t particularly strong, but this is not a huge problem, as the director and DoP concoct drama through the climactic photography and montage (with high contrast images and mostly static cameras with a solid focus point).

Cold War is an impressive movie, and it serves to consolidate Pawel Pawlikowski’s partnership with Lukasz Zal and their singular style. This is a move away from the Pawlikowski of the noughties, with the lighthearted tone of My Summer of Love (2006) – which is in our top 10 hottest films of all times.

Cold War showed at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, when this piece was originally published. It is out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, August 31st. On Mubi on Sunday, July 17th (2022). Also available on other platforms.

The Fastest (Najlepszy)

Posted on by victorfraga

By most accounts, 13 years of heroin addiction prepare you for an untimely death. Yet in the case of Jerzy Górski, protagonist of The Fastest, they spurred him on to compete in the Virginia Double Iron Triathlon. Director Łukasz Palkowski is back in familiar territory after 2014’s Gods, the biopic of a cardiac surgeon. But can he overcome his crowd-pleasing inclinations and deliver the incisive film that this real-life story necessitates?

The Fastest drops us straight into the action with an opening sequence that sets the scene for adolescent delinquency in a small southwestern Polish town. We are introduced to Jerzy (Jakub Gierszał), a rebellious young man decked out in leather and metal who commits petty crimes in order to fund his drug seshs with his disillusioned peers. Jerzy becomes romantically involved with Grazyna (Anna Próchniak), the daughter of a local Communist Party official, and soon encourages her to indulge in opioid escapism. The first third of the film sets up Jerzy and Grazyna’s escalating heroin dependency, before everything comes crashing down and he commences a brutal rehabilitation regime.

From then on in, we’re exposed to Jerzy’s gruelling physical and emotional development, as he latches on to the near impossible dream of training for a triathlon under the mentorship of a local swimming pool manager (Arkadiusz Jakubik). This is a remarkable true story that has little coverage both inside and out of Poland. It has the potential to be an eye-opening account of the diverse determinants and callous consequences of addiction, while also providing an inspirational elegy to those in a seemingly hopeless spiral.

Unfortunately, Jerzy’s troubled brilliance is doused in glossy cliché from start to finish. The use of montage has a long history in filmmaking and is not inherently bad. However, The Fastest seems to rely solely on multiple montages to represent Jerzy’s development, when there are surely other cinematic techniques available. Villains, heroes and love interests are all somewhat one-dimensional and can be spotted a mile off.

In addition, there appears to be little recognition of the complexities of the protagonist’s character. Jerzy’s long-term on-and-off relationship with his local sweetheart is constructed primarily as a battle against the injustices of her father. There’s a lack of acknowledgement that his paternalistic urges may actually be a justified response to Jerzy’s destructive recklessness. This sort of detailed characterisation is much better achieved across an array of other Polish biopics, such as ’90s hip-hop heavyweight You Are God (Leszek Dawid, 2012) and the morbidly fascinating portrait of Zdzisław Beksiński, The Last Family (Jan P. Matuszyński, 2016).

The film also uses a bewildering selection of musical reference points. It’s bookended by Steppenwolf and The Doors, which seems normal enough – if a tad lazy – until you remember that this is a Polish film set in the Communist era. Western music was undoubtedly available on the Eastern Bloc’s black market. However, there is a wealth of Polish rock and roll that was created in direct response to communism and speaks precisely of the listlessness that led Jerzy’s generation to seek solace in substance dependency. World cinema is often commercially successful and there is little evidence to suggest that domestic music alienates an international audience. So why the lack of imagination and relevance in The Fastest?

Even if we ignore the musical misgivings, Palkowski commits one of the worst cinematic crimes as the film’s heroic climax beckons. In an utterly bizarre move, the director rearranges the facts in order to make Jerzy’s achievements seem miraculously impossible. This is a baffling decision, as it’s impressive enough that Jerzy kicked a 13-year addiction, let alone competed in and subsequently won a double triathlon. The disappointment is particularly pertinent in a film that frames itself with archive footage and biographical facts, seemingly screaming out its ‘true story’ credentials.

In a nutshell, The Fastest ends up being the story of a one-time heroin addict who beat the odds and became Double Ironman World Champion with the help of four montages. Jerzy Górski’s athletic achievements are indeed remarkable, but Polish art has long found strength in subtlety and symbolism. By the fourth time you see Jerzy get knocked down and then get up again, you realise that this film is a Hollywood-esque mess. This is undoubtedly a dirty story and one worth learning about. Regrettably, in Palkowski’s hands it descends into a farcical parody of the biopic genre. There’s only one Man of Iron (Andrzej Wajda, 1981) in Polish cinema. This isn’t it.

The Fastest is out in selected Odeon cinemas across the UK. Click here for more information.

The Lure (Córki Dancingu)

Posted on by victorfraga

A naïve mermaid feels the aching tug of first-love on her heartstrings and sings her way to a pair of human legs, so that she can marry her adoring prince. If this story sounds at all familiar, fear not. Agnieszka Smoczyńska’s debut feature film The Lure bites a siren-shaped hole in Disney’s sugary singalong classic The Little Mermaid (Ron Clements/ John Musker,1989) and pushes Hans Christian Andersen’s original tale to a bloodier – and more feminist – climax.

Local Polish legend claims that two mermaid sisters were swimming through the Baltic Sea; one swam to Copenhagen, but the other swam down the Vistula river and later became the symbol of Warsaw. Smoczyńska adds a small twist to this mythology by making the sisters, Silver (Marta Mazurek) and Golden (Michalina Olszańska), turn up on the tree-lined river banks of the city. After serenading a local synth-pop band, Silver and Golden get a gig singing and dancing with their new friends among the kitschy glamour of an underground burlesque club.

Plus, this isn’t just a mermaid horror movie – it’s also a musical!!!

Their young skin and sweet tones stir the passions of many male regulars, as well as their young-looking bandmate bassist (Jakub Gierszał). But in a nod to Homer’s Odyssey and the sisters’ fierce independence, they’re not just a pair of pretty faces.Beneath their innocent veneer, there’s a distinctly asexual androgyny, a monstrous set of scales and enough sharp teeth to tear out a few hearts. Eventually, their paths part. Fair-haired Silver represents a more idealistic understanding of adolescent romance. The darker Golden uses her body in as free a way as possible and has fun with it. Both sisters are prepared to act and are primarily motivated by their own will, rather than pandering to the desires of men around them. This culminates in an end bleeding with revenge, very different to its Disney counterpart and far more in line with contemporary culture.

Sisters Basia and Zuzia Wrońska, better known as electro-pop duo Ballady i Romanse, craft a captivating original score that manages to acknowledge both theatrical musical conventions and the film’s dark poetic exploration of identity. While The Little Mermaid’s Ariel wallows in Prince Eric imposed despair, wishing she could be part of that world, Silver and Golden dance past Warsaw’s Palace of Culture and Science, confident that the city will reveal to them exactly what’s missing in their lives. The songs’ English subtitles seem to do complete justice to the original Polish. They display that vivid melancholia reminiscent of Adam Mickiewicz, the romantic national poet who inspired Ballady i Romanse’s band name. Visually, Smoczyńska displays supreme directorial flair, from department store backflips to kinky police leather eroticism. Each number works on its own as a solid music video, but nonetheless slots seamlessly into the overarching narrative.

Ballady i Romanse also contribute a number of covers to the soundtrack, notably Andrzej Zaucha’s 1988 pop hit Byłaś Serca Biciem. This, alongside an encounter with street milicja, gives rise to the fact that the film is set in the communist Polish People’s Republic (PRL). There is undoubted importance – and cinematic beauty – in the bleak palettes of Krzysztof Kieslowśki’s pre-89 Poland, or Andrzej Wajda’s allegorical critique of cultural censorship. However, Smoczyńska opts to show an alternative side to the PRL, one in which an exciting life could be danced away in a vodka-fueled communal dancehall, if only for an evening. This in itself is a commendable and illuminating turn from tradition.

In a nutshell, The Lure ties together a wealth of elements of Polish culture, such as dystopian surrealistic paintings, the camp musical joys of the communist era and Warsaw’s own infamous mermaid folklore. It’s also a universal and magically brutal coming-of-age fairytale. An impressive debut and a splash of subversion on Disney’s mermaid.

The Lure was release as part of the Criterion Collection just in time for Halloween – click here for more information.

The Last Family (Ostatnia Rodzina)

Posted on by victorfraga

The late Zdzisław Beksiński had a fixation with the post-apocalyptical – a nightmarish view of neither heaven nor hell – which made him a renowned architect turned self-taught painter, photographer and sculptor in the field of dystopian surrealism. In The Last Family, however, we see a very different man: the portrayal of a middle-class household of five instead, struggling to keep their bonds as relatives under the same roof. The film depicts a time when the contemporary painter (played here by Andrzej Seweryn) lived with his family in a small town in south-eastern Poland named Sanok, before relocating to Warsaw in the late 1970s. Zdzisław Beksiński was tragically murdered in 2005, days before his 86th birthday.

Although there’s a focus on the father and son’s relationship, we have the remarkable wife Zofia (Aleksandra Konieczna) holding the two together, while looking after her own mother and mother-in-law. Her husband’s needs seem to be her priority as he lives a reclusive life focusing on painting, but their mentally unstable son Tomek (Dawid Ogrodnik) is notable for his outbursts of rage, and ultimately threatens the stability of their home.

Twenty-eight years are put into perspective, and Robert Bolesto rightfully salvaged the bulk of the script from Beksiński’s own video-recording of his family in their new apartment (with some of the footage brilliantly juxtaposed throughout). Jan P. Matuszyński erected these four claustrophobic walls together, and the result is absolutely gut-wrenching. It’s a commendable experience, each individual coming up for air under their distinct circumstances, and the restaging of the scenes is often hard to watch, perhaps due to the sheer intimacy.

There are no easy answers. The Last Family does not provide deep insight into the distressed mind that created such bizarrely detailed paintings, and viewers are never told that such personal turmoil was a trigger for creativity. It might even come as a surprise to some to know that Beksiński was in fact a very focused and optimistic individual, despite his reclusiveness. The film does not attempt to delve into his work. Instead audiences are left to join the dots, and to match the root of his most chaotic work to some of the crudeness of all the played out sequences. It’s an absolutely harrowing experience in the tragedy and nostalgia it evokes.

The Last Family had a worldwide theatrical release in November 2016, and it’s available to view online for free as part of the ArteKino Festival between December 1st and 17th (2017).