Jak Się Masz: English-Language Movies That Feature Polish
The tantalising timbre of the Polish tongue can actually be heard in many English-language movies from the US and UK. Culture.pl takes a look at ten such films, showing Polish quotes from them and assessing how some foreign actors handled the uneasy task of speaking in Poland’s native language. Be advised, this article contains spoilers!
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'Water for Elephants', photo: 20th Century Fox
We start off with a film that includes an absolutely delightful use of Polish, 2011’s Water for Elephants. In this film, based on the same-titled novel by Sara Gruen, a veterinarian with Polish roots, Jacob Jankowski, joins a travelling circus in 1930s America. Jacob, played by Robert Pattinson, knows Polish thanks to his parents and discovers that Rosie, an elephant owned by the circus, only understands commands in Polish. Eventually Jacob teaches the circus’ boss, August Rosenbluth, to communicate with Rosie in Polish. One scene has the elephant performing the Polish request Proszę podnieś nogę which means ‘Please lift your leg’. Later, when the elephant hears módlmy się, which is Polish for ‘Let us pray’ it… kneels down! Polish can also be heard in a couple of other scenes in this movie and Pattinson’s use of it sounds quite convincing.
At this point it might be worth mentioning that Polish can be a tricky language for some, Pattinson being one of them. In a 2011 interview for the Polish TV station TVN, the actor admitted that acting in Polish on the set of Water for Elephants was challenging:
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I had to sing a song in Polish, a lullaby. […] That was one of the hardest scenes for me.
Author
From plejada.pl, trans. MK
Disappointingly though, in the end this lullaby didn’t make it into the final cut of the film.
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'City of Angels', Nicholas Cage, photo: Warner Bros
Whereas Water for Elephants includes the Polish phrase ‘Let us pray’, our next film includes an actual Polish prayer. City of Angels from 1998 follows an angel by the name of Seth, played by Nicolas Cage, who in 1990s Los Angeles guides the spirits of recently dead humans to the afterlife. Seth falls in love with the mortal woman Maggie and decides to become human himself so that he can be with her. In order to become a man, Seth must undergo a process called ‘falling’ – he does this by jumping off the roof of a skyscraper. During this pivotal scene, the Polish prayer Zdrowaś Maryjo (Hail Mary) can be heard in the background: Święta Maryjo, Matko Boża, módl się za nami grzesznymi teraz i w godzinę śmierci naszej. Amen. This translates as: ‘Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.’
Interestingly, the aforementioned prayer is chanted by a Polish choir and is an excerpt from the 1984 composition Angelus by the esteemed Polish composer Wojciech Kilar. From the perspective of English-speaking audiences, the sound of this foreign language surely adds some mystique to the scene of Seth’s falling.
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‘Year of the Dragon’, photo: Forum
Next up we have another movie that includes Polish in a religious context. In 1985’s Year of the Dragon Mickey Rourke plays Stanley White, a policeman with Polish roots. The movie is set mainly in the New York City in the 1980s and its protagonist fights against Chinese organised crime. The criminals that Stanley White opposes eventually murder his wife, Connie. During her funeral service at a church, a priest can be heard saying in flawless Polish: Dusza moja oczekuje Pana. […] U Pana jest bowiem łaska, u Niego obfite odkupienie. In English this biblical quote means: ‘My soul waits for the Lord. […] For with the Lord there is mercy, and with Him is abundant redemption.’ The presence of a Polish priest at the funeral of White’s wife undoubtedly highlights the main character’s Polish heritage.
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New York City is also the first stop on the American journey of Borat Sagdiyev, the fictitious Kazakhstani journalist who’s the main character in 2006’s film Borat. The infamous Borat, played by Sacha Baron Cohen, leaves Kazakhstan and travels through contemporary USA to make a documentary about life in the latter country. A number of funny and cringe-worthy situations occur as Borat interacts with Americans in ways that aren’t in line with American culture.
Borat speaks with a heavy accent and mixes words and phrases from foreign languages into his English, magnifying the contrast between his character and the realities of America. However, even though the journalist comes from Kazakhstan, he doesn’t make use of Kazakhstani expressions. Instead, he intersperses his English with Hebrew and Polish (which is kind of an absurd, comedic device). In the film you can hear Borat say in broken Polish: Jak się masz (How do you do), Dziękuję (Thank you) and Dzień dobry (Good morning). Polish can also be heard in the sequel to Borat, 2020’s Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.
It seems that learning Polish posed a bit of a problem for Sacha Baron Cohen. Here’s how he commented on his use of foreign languages in the films about Borat in a 2021 interview by Collider:
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With the first Borat, the aim was that I would learn fluent Polish prior to the start of filming. I only gave myself a month and I started a few hours a day. After about two weeks, I realized that it was never gonna happen, so I decided to incorporate Hebrew, which I spoke fairly well. My mother is from Israel. In the new movie, there’s a mixture of some Polish that I learned, some Hebrew, and then there’s also some Bulgarian.
Author
From: collider.com
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'The Fugitive', photo: Image Capital Pictures / Forum
After mentioning films that show Los Angeles and New York, it’s time to discuss a movie that portrays another major American city. A lot of the action of 1993’s The Fugitive takes place in Chicago. Richard Kimble, a Chicago doctor played by Harrison Ford, is falsely sentenced to death for the murder of his wife. Kimble, however, manages to escape the transport taking him away from Chicago to prison. He later makes his way back to the Windy City to try to clear his name. Since he’s a fugitive he can’t simply go back to his own home, so he decides to rent a basement apartment from a Polish woman. As Kimble is looking around his new quarters for the first time, the woman and her son are there. You can hear her ask her child in fluent Polish: Co myślisz? Ja myślę, że on będzie zadowolony z tego. This translates as: ‘What do you think? I think he’ll be happy with this.’ To this the son replies: Taaa, which in English means ‘Yeah.’ This little episode is clearly a nod to Chicago’s large Polish community.
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Olek Krupa in 'Home Alone 3', photo: 20th Century Fox
Next up we have another movie set, for the most part, in Chicago. The third instalment in the famed Home Alone comedy franchise was released in 1997, continuing the earlier films’ motif of a young boy managing to prevent multiple criminals from committing a crime.
The protagonist of Home Alone 3 is 8-year-old Alex Pruitt who lives in a house in the suburbs of 1990s Chicago. By accident, he receives a remote control car that contains a highly important military microchip. Meanwhile, four rogue spies searching for the microchip figure out that Alex has it and plan to retrieve it from him. The boy, having caught chickenpox and unable to attend school, is left home alone and has to face the foursome. He booby-traps his house and a number of funny situations ensue.
In one scene, Alex gets yelled at in perfect Polish by one of the spies, Petr Beaupre, who’s frustrated with not being able to find the microchip. The spy shouts: Rozgniotę cię jak karalucha! Gdzie dysk?! This translates as: ‘I’ll crush you like a cockroach! Where’s the disk?!’ Interestingly, the microchip gets labelled as a ‘disk’ here.
It ought to be said that in the rest of the film Beaupre speaks in English. So perhaps the aforementioned scene was improvised. That might well be the case as the actor playing Beaupre, Olek Krupa, is Polish. He was born in the town of Rybnik in southern Poland and before moving to America in the 1980s he studied acting at the Aleksander Zelwerowicz National Academy of Dramatic Art in Warsaw.
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‘X-Men: Apocalypse’, photo: 20th Century Fox
So far, all the films on this list were mainly set in America, but our next movie takes the viewer to 1980s Poland. X-Men: Apocalypse is one of the many films in the X-Men franchise which revolves around the adventures of the titular mutant superheroes. In this 2016 film, one of the superheroes, Michael Fassbender’s Magneto, lives incognito in Poland under the communist regime as Henryk Górski. He works at a metal foundry in the town Pruszków and has a happy family life with his wife and daughter. Unfortunately, when his mutant powers are revealed, the police take his daughter and a dramatic standoff occurs between the policemen and Magneto’s family. In this scene, which is all in Polish, Magneto tries to appeal to his friendship with one of the officers: Ty mnie znasz, jestem Henryk Górski. Jakub, jadłem kolację w twoim domu. This translates as: ‘You know me, I’m Henryk Górski. Jakub, I’ve had dinner at your house.’
Magneto’s Polish dialogues in this scene are well-delivered, but earlier in the film he sings his daughter a Polish lullaby and it’s rather hard to understand the words in this song, even if you’re Polish: Więc daj odpocząć oczom swym i zaśnij. In English, this means: ‘So let your eyes rest and fall asleep.’ Here’s how Michael Fassbender commented on his use of Polish in X-Men: Apocalypse in a 2016 interview for The Pioneer:
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I’m excellent at Polish. I can sing in Polish, I can dance in Polish, I can cook Polish meals! No, I’m pretty bad. If a person is a native Polish speaker, they’d be appalled, but I tried my best.
Author
From dailypioneer.com
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‘Sophie’s Choice’, photo: Universal Pictures
Our next movie also shows Poland, but during World War II. In 1982’s famous drama Sophie’s Choice, based on the novel by William Styron, Meryl Streep plays Sophie Zawistowska, a Polish immigrant living in New York in the year 1947. Sophie gets caught up in an emotional triangle with her hot-tempered lover Nathan Landau and the writer Stingo.
The events taking place in America are juxtaposed with flashbacks of Sophie’s life in Poland before and during World War II. Tragically, Sophie and her two children were sent to the Auschwitz death camp where one of the children was killed. Later, due to her typing skills and knowledge of German, Sophie was put to work as a typist at the residence of the Nazi commander of Auschwitz Rudolf Höss. Before she starts to work there, she’s approached by a Polish resistance member who tries to persuade her to help the resistance by stealing a radio from the residence. This entire scene is in Polish and Sophie can be heard saying: Tak, tak, dam tobie radio, ty je przemycisz [..] a mnie naturalnie zabiją za to, że je ukradłam. This translates as: ‘Sure, sure, I give you the radio, you smuggle it out and I’ll be killed for stealing it, of course.’
Polish can be heard elsewhere in this film as well, and in America Sophie speaks English with a Polish accent. Both Sophie’s Polish and her Polish accent are convincing and that probably played a part in Meryl Streep winning an Oscar for her performance in this film. In a 2014 conversation with Entertainment Tonight, Streep recalled how she prepared to speak like a Pole in Sophie’s Choice:
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[…] I really wanted to speak Polish and I thought that if I learned to speak Polish then the diphthongs and sounds of that language would be in my mouth. So I just went to Berlitz and got a teacher. […] My little son used to say to me when I would come home at night: ‘No Polish, no Polish, mommy!’ He was sick of it.
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'Ladies in Lavender', photo: NG Collection / Forum
While the former film shows Poland in the World War II era, our next movie is set shortly before that conflict, in the year 1936. Ladies in Lavender is a charming 2004 drama in which the young Polish violinist Andrea Marowski, played by Daniel Brühl, gets washed up on the seashore of Cornwall in England after falling off a ship en route to America. He’s taken in by two aging sisters, Janet and Ursula, who help him recuperate. Eventually, Ursula develops feelings for the much younger Andrea.
Andrea doesn’t know a word in English when he unexpectedly arrives in England he (he only learns the language later on). Therefore he initially communicates with the sisters in German which they all know. Also, as a Pole, he occasionally says something in Polish. In one scene, he’s shown peeling potatoes with the sisters’ maid Dorcas. Andrea is clearly unhappy that he has to perform this task and a funny dialogue unfolds between him and the maid. Andrea says in Polish: Wyglądasz jak ziemniak. Właściwie wyglądasz jak worek ziemniaków. In English this means: ‘You look like a potato. Actually, you look like a sack of potatoes.’ To this Dorcas, who doesn’t speak Polish, replies: ‘It’s rather good I can’t understand a word you’re saying.’ Fortunately, Polish speakers can understand what Andrea says in this dialogue as his Polish is quite decent in this scene.
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Elle Fanning & Agnieszka Grochowska in ‘Teen Spirit’, photo: Monolith Films
Like Ladies in Lavender, 2018’s musical drama film Teen Spirit is also set in England. Its protagonist is Elle Fanning’s Violet Valenski, a modern day teenager living on the Isle of Wight. Violet dreams of becoming a pop star and enters a TV singing competition called Teen Spirit. After getting some singing tips from a former opera singer, she manages to progress in the competition and eventually wins its final round held in London.
Interestingly, Violet has Polish roots. Her mother Marla, who’s played by the acclaimed Polish actress Agnieszka Grochowska, is a Polish immigrant. Mother and daughter communicate in Polish in a few scenes. For example, when Marla is having a cigarette, Violet tells her: Nie lubię jak palisz, which means ‘I don’t like it when you smoke.’ When Violet is already in London she has conversations with her mother over the phone. In one of them, the aspiring singer tells Marla: Jestem taka samotna, which translates as ‘I am so lonely.’ Violet’s mother tries to cheer her daughter up by saying: Zaszłaś bardzo daleko i tylko dzięki sobie. In English this means: ‘You’ve come a very long way and it’s all thanks to yourself.’
Naturally, Elle Fanning’s Polish isn’t as good as Agnieszka Grochowska’s. But that’s fine since the character of Violet appears to be less immersed in Polish culture than her mother.
In a 2018 interview with IMDB, Elle Fanning was asked about the difficulty of some of the acting tasks she had to perform in Teen Spirit. Here’s how she responded:
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Polish was the hardest. Polish is a whole other world of difficult!
Of course, there are more English-language films featuring Polish out there. For instance, in 1983’s To Be or Not to Be, Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft sing a song (mostly) in Polish, and Gene Hackman in 1977’s A Bridge Too Far says a couple words too. Let’s hope that the list of foreign films including Polish will grow so that more and more people can unexpectedly get to enjoy the sound of this beautiful language!
Written by Marek Kępa, Jun 21
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