During the 14 years which passed since Jakimowski’s debut Squint Your Eyes, he worked out his own film idiolect. He narrated in his own way, without haste and with tenderness. In Tricks and the excellent Imagine, he lets himself be known as cinema’s poet. Once Upon a Time…, although entirely different from those titles, confirms his voice’s strength.
Its strength lies in the studious observance of life. It is exactly Once Upon a Time’s… documentalistic observation which becomes the director’s greatest strength. Instead of making a character tell monologues about his hardships, Jakimowski shows a young man pressing his hands against a warm radiator. Here, small gestures mean more than words.
When reviewing Jakimowski’s film, Łukasz Maciejewski noticed that realistic episodes composing it could become topics for features in the local press. This is Once Upon a Time’s… biggest malady. The documentalist observance of life gives way to journalism. Jakimowski reaches for Małgorzata Szumowska’s method and rewords newspaper headlines into film scenes. Thus we have a story about rampant reprivatisation, police-station violence, heartless bailiffs and Polish nationalism, which becomes the film’s second part’s topic.
Here, Jakimowski the poet moves over for Jakimowski the citizen. While Ken Loach, cinema’s great socialist, who has been speaking up for the weakest for years, is the film’s first sequences’ patron, the concluding sequences are closer to Oliver Stone and Michael Moore’s engaged features.
When the Tricks director talks about nationalists rioting at the November 11th celebrations, when Poles commemorate independence, and destroying one of Warsaw’s squats, literality creeps into Once Upon a Time…. The journalistic discussion about the Polish legal system is written into the dialogues of two lecturers; the squat becomes a symbol for social equality’s last stand; and the characters give impassioned speeches about Warsaw insurgents giving their lives for the fatherland.
Jakimowski cannot stop and say to himself: that’s enough. He still adds new scenes and new topics to his film. And even if he is right, and his emotions and civil stance are easily understandable, the film loses out because of its journalistic tone.
- Once Upon a Time in November. Directing and screen-writing: Andrzej Jakimowski, cinematography: Andrzej Bajerski, music: Tomasz Gąssowski. Cast: Agata Kulesza, Grzegorz Palkowski and others.
Originally written by Bartosz Staszczyszyn, November 2017, translated by Patryk Grabowski, October 2017.