In video game vocabulary, a camper (kamper in Polish) is an idle dodger. Whilst his comrades take risks and face the virtual enemy, he stays in a corner and waits until the adversaries approach him and offer themselves as an easy target. This kind of strategy does not bring glory, but delivers results.
It is no coincidence that Kamper, a thirty-something played by Piotr Żurawski, has this nickname. Not only does he consistently apply the crouching tactics in the virtual realm, but also considers it the best guarantee of security in real life. He turned his hobby into a job and has become the head of a team of game testers working for some of the major global producers. He’s never faced life difficulties, everything just came to him. He lives with his wife, Mania (another great role by Marta Nieradkiewicz) in an apartment bought by her parents. He lives carelessly until black clouds begin to gather over his marriage… Suddenly, Kamper becomes a man-child in his wife’s eyes, while his friends keep telling him to ‘pull himself together.’
Kamper is promoted in Poland as a generational manifesto, however, this interpretation of Grzegorzek’s film does not make too much sense. Its protagonists are undoubtedly non-representative of the contemporary generation of thirty-somethings. Their professional situation is stable and, instead of a rented maisonette, they live in an unmortgaged three-bedroom apartment. They live in the capital, he works in a corporation, while she can afford to follow her passion without having to make personal sacrifices. They cannot be seen as typical members of the precariat, struggling with uncertainty on an everyday basis. But perhaps that is not necessary? Maybe it would be worth looking at them not as emissaries of the generation, but as individuals made of flesh and blood, insecurities and fears?
‘I describe my generation, because I am most familiar with it, but my aim was to paint a universal portrait’, Grzegorzek said in an interview with Piotr Czerkawski from Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.