9 Polish Films for the Holidays
The holiday season is a time for heartfelt feasts and bonding with family and friends, but the holiday break that comes with it is a perfect opportunity to relax and watch some positive, amusing, even artistic movies. Culture.pl has selected nine Polish films that will perfectly garnish your New Year’s and Christmas holidays.
Letters to Santa / Listy do M. (2011)
Not so long ago, the film adaptation of Sienkiewicz’s trilogy would be shown on Polish television on New Year’s Eve, much as It’s A Wonderful Life is a holiday staple in America. However, the preferences and tastes of Poles have since changed. Now you are more likely to see the American comedy Home Alone on commercial channels on this holiday instead of the pictures based on the historical epic classic of Polish literature.
Despite their great love of Western cinema, Poles do have a movie which can hold its own as an essential holiday picture. This is Letters to Santa, one of the highest-grossing Polish films in the last 25 years. The romantic comedy premiered on Christmas Eve 2011. It went on to be seen in theatres by 2.5 million Poles. The sequel Letters to Santa 2 drew an even larger audience, but we recommend the first instalment, which, according to many critics, is more interesting than the sequel.
The main character of the film is the radio DJ Mikołaj. He takes phone calls while he is on air, attentively listening to the problems of strangers. He supports them and gives them advice, even though he can’t handle his own personal problems at all. Mikołaj has spent more than one Christmas at work, while his son Kostek sits at home, listening to his father on the radio. But, as is known to happen during the holidays, miracles happen…
Brew yourself some tea with lemon, snuggle up under a blanket, and watch Letters to Santa.
Vabank (1981)
This crime comedy, which came out in 1981, was the debut work of the fabulous Polish director Juliusz Machulski. The film’s story takes place in the 1930s. The renowned safecracker Kwinto is released from jail and is determined to be finished with his life of crime. However, his plans soon change. After learning of the death of his friend, he decides to take revenge on the culprit – the banker Kramer. The majority of our readers are probably well acquainted with Vabank and its notable sequel Vabank 2. The films were popular even in the USSR. Many were also enchanted by the brilliant music, which was written for the film by Henryk Kuźniak. Once, the composer came to Moscow and heard some street musicians playing his melody from Vabank in a metro tunnel. He returned to his hotel, turned on the radio and once again heard his work. 'It was one of the happiest and saddest days of my life. I then realized that the melody from Vabank is known and loved by millions, but I’m not earning a cent from it,' Mr. Kuźniak likes to joke. The thing is that in Poland creators of musical pieces receive royalties for every use of their works. These norms aren’t necessarily observed in Russia, therefore, as Henryk Kuźniak says, it will not make him a millionaire.
Vinci, or Vabank-3 (2004)
In order to guarantee the success of this movie over the vast territory of the former Soviet Union, the studio changed its name. The film is actually called Vinci, however, recalling the success of Vabank, and considering that the comedy is directed by the very same Juliusz Machulski, it was released in Russian under the title Vabank-3. The plot line of the picture is in no way connected with Machulski’s legendary characters Kwinto and Kramer. The events take place in modern day. The main characters, Cuma and Julian, who are brilliantly portrayed by Robert Więckiewicz and Borys Szyc, set off to steal Leonardo da Vinci’s painting Lady with an Ermine. You must watch Vinci to find out if they are successful. And also – you must visit Kraków, where Leonardo da Vinci’s invaluable Lady with an Ermine is on display.
Jasminum (2006)
Don’t confuse this movie with the Woody Allen drama of the same name. The Polish Jasminum debuted seven years earlier. The director of the film, Jan Jakub Kolski, is a one-man-band. He wrote the script, he took up the role of director, he produced the movie and sometimes he even took the camera in his hands and shot his own film! In the melodrama Jasminum, Kolski shows a monastery that produced three saints in the XVI century. In the present day, strange things are happening in this hermitage, which is cut off from the outside world: the monks begin to smell fragrant. One of hackberry, another of cherries, and a third of plums. The abbot of the monastery, relying on an ancient prophecy, decides that soon other miracles would begin to happen here. As this is all happening, a restoration artist and her small daughter come to the abode of the hermits.
Interestingly, the phenomenon of the inexplicable fragrance is not some fantastic brainchild of the director. It is similar to things that have been recorded by the Catholic church. For instance, the Italian priest Padre Pio was also known to smell fragrant. He was also famous for exhibiting stigmata – wounds on the parts of the body that correspond to the wounds Jesus Christ received when he was crucified.
Chopin: Desire for Love (2002)
Here is a film for those who want to learn more about the genius Polish composer Frédéric Chopin. Before watching Chopin: Desire for Love, you must listen to the unbelievably beautiful concerto in E or F minor for piano with an orchestra, which the composer wrote when he was only 20 years old. The incredible sensuality and emotion of the virtuoso’s music will set you up for the film. In the movie the young Chopin leaves war-torn Poland and moves to fashionable Paris. He misses home, but he was never able to return to his native country. As he is dying, Chopin asks his sister to bring his heart back to his homeland. Today, the genius’s heart is entombed in a pillar of the Holy Cross Church in Warsaw.
The film Chopin: Desire for Love has it all: despair, nostalgia, happiness, passionate encounters between the composer and one of boldest women of that time, the writer George Sand, and of course, lots of wonderful music.
The Quack (1982) / Znachor
- Oh Lord, Pani Anna, how you have changed! I didn’t even recognize you!
- Yes, I am now three times fatter than I was in 1980, when I played Marysia in The Quack. This could also happen to you. You know, it turns out that this isn’t the worst thing in life.
Diva of Polish film Anna Dymna loves to colourfully retell conversations that she has from time to time with her countrymen who stop her on the streets of her native Kraków. The actress has played around a hundred roles on the screen and on the stage, but many remember her best as the daughter of the surgeon, Rafał Wilczur, who she played in the movie The Quack. At the very beginning of the picture, her father in the film, who is played by the actor Jerzy Bińczycki, suddenly loses everything that he had: his family, job, money and even his memory. He becomes a vagrant and must his start his life over again from scratch. A new path leads Wilczur back to what he had been doing for his entire life – treating people.
If you have never seen The Quack before, you absolutely must. It’s like a cold shower – it elicits emotions and reminds about simple truths that are so often forgotten.
Gods (2014)
Here is another medically-themed film. The movie Gods tells us about the famous Polish cardiac surgeon Zbigniew Religa, who in 1985 performed the first successful heart transplant in Poland. Religa is obsessive, emotional, and often unstable. He was willing to do anything to realize his dreams of successfully transplanting a heart, even cooperating with the communist party, which he hated.
This film, directed by Łukasz Palkowski, not only relates these events, which were revolutionary for Polish medicine, but also recreates the atmosphere of Poland in the 1980s for the viewers.
Gods was one of the top movie events of 2014 in Poland and it took home some impressive hardware from Polish film festivals.
Sexmission (1984) [the Russian title is 'New Amazons']
If you want to discuss the movie New Amazons with your Polish friends, they will most likely not understand what you are talking about and say that they have never seen it.
'I became of a victim of the fact that ‘there is no sex in the USSR’. On the eve of its debut in the Soviet Union, censors cut out scenes that were too bold, in the opinion of the unfortunate Soviet critics, and then they cut the title,' recalls director Juliusz Machulski. The Polish version was also censored. Unlike in the Soviet Union, though, the film was shortened not by 40 minutes, but only by three. The local arbiters of the film’s fate at that time decided that it was necessary to remove the scene in which the hero, Max says: 'Our heading is to the east. There must be some sort of civilization out there.' Polish censors considered this to be too obvious a hint that the communist regime in Poland was dependent on the USSR.
Why is Sexmission worth a watch? First of all, it is interesting and quirky. In his film, Machulski shows an absurd world without men. Secondly, it is very funny. In the 1990s in Poland, the oft-quoted film was considered to be the funniest comedy of the century. Even in everyday conversation, Poles would drop in the lines 'Copernicus was a woman' and 'They died out? After all, they were not mammoths'. By the way, in the film Sexmission, there is no sex. No one’s puritanical feelings will be offended. We promise!
Darling, don’t lie / Nie kłam, kochanie (2008)
The leading role of the romantic comedy Darling, Don’t Lie is played by actor Piotr Adamczyk. Among Polish filmmakers, he is often made fun of, like Sergey Bezrukov is made fun of in Russia, who 'has played every famous personality but himself'. Disregarding the pointed comments of jokesters and ill-wishers, Adamczyk’s impressive resume includes, besides the roles of Chopin, the Polish Pope John Paul II, Louis XIV, and Witold Gombrowicz, among around a hundred other roles. He truly is a great actor who can play just about anyone: Shakespeare characters in their original language, Polish war heroes, swindlers, young lovers or venerable old men.
In the comedy Darling, Don’t Lie, he mastered his task wonderfully once again – Adamczyk charms the audience in a remarkable way. His movie character Marcin loses a very good job, after which he finds himself with serious financial problems. The only hope for Marcin is his wealthy aunt Nela from England, who promised to pass down her entire fortune to him. There is one catch: Aunt Nela, who is fabulously portrayed by Beata Tyszkiewicz, demands that her nephew get married first. As it turns out, finding just one woman who does not hate him amongst his ex-girlfriends is not an easy task.
Written by Eugeniusz Klimakin
Translated by Katherine Alberti
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