"Rewers" / "Reverse", © PWSFTviT
Nonetheless, it has to be said, the results were varied. Polish cinema has definitely improved in form, while also gaining new and previously rare content. Twenty years after our country regained its freedom, Polish cinema finally began settling accounts with the "People's Poland". The intention was not just to remove dark stains and do historical justice to certain individuals or groups - Polish cinema has clearly begun to successfully reflect on where we are coming from to better understand who we are today.
Among the debuts, the most important of course was Borys Lankosz's Rewers / Reverse, winner of the Golden Lions at the Gdynia film festival. And rightly so, because it has everything a good film should have. It has a meticulously developed script (Andrzej Bart), excellent, chiefly black-and-white cinematography which is hard to distinguish from footage taken from old newsreels (the work of Marcin Koszałka). Then there is the brilliant acting, especially from the female side - Agata Buzek (best actress award at the Gdynia festival), Krystyna Janda, and Anna Polony. Actually, Marcin Dorociński as the secret police agent trying to recruit the leading heroine also plays his part very well (winning Best Supporting Actor at the Gdynia festival). The film, set in the early 1950s, in Stalinist times, shows the other side of the historical coin, different from the one we known of from textbooks. This is done in a humorous convention, skilfully merging black humour in the Coen-brothers-style with anecdotes that seems taken straight from Frank Capra's Arsenic and Old Lace. From the directorial perspectivee, this truly is an example of dedicatd work. That there's none of the usual martyrdom in Reverse? This is precisely what the film's perverse nature is all about, even inscribed, so to speak, in the title.
Perfect form and precise narrative - so far these have not been assets in easy reach of our debuting feature directors. Meanwhile, here is a change... The surprise is all the greater in that Reverse is not an exception, as proved by Paweł Borowski's Zero, for instance. The director - a painter, draughtsman, maker of animated films, and advertising agency worker - composed his multiple-thread film to resemble a musical roundabout, where the stories of many people, such as a businessman, a private detective, a taxi driver and a porn star, develop, flow, and become intertwined, only to return to the starting point, "back to zero". The plot is set in the present in a large conurbation, often in cold, modern interiors. The film itself is also emotionally chilly, although it often speaks of traumatic events. Why such coldness in the city? Borowski seems to think it is a permanent facet of the world around us, a world in which there is more and more emptiness, and less and less authentic emotion. And this diagnosis is absolutely universal, equally clear to a Polish person as it is to an American or a Frenchman.
Some years ago, when Psy / Pigs was such a huge success in Poland, Andrzej Wajda said about the film's director Władysław Pasikowski that he knew something about audiences that he himself had never known. Today many a master filmmaker could say the same of 29-year-old debuting director Katarzyna Rosłaniec. Her Galerianki / Mall Girls brought in an audience of over half a million in three months. Until recently, this kind of turnout was reserved almost exclusively for romantic comedies and adaptations of required school reading. Meanwhile, Mall Girls is a drama. It is a story about young girls of secondary school age roaming giant shopping malls in search of older guys prepared to buy "services" of a sexual nature in return for a pair of jeans. It has to be understood that this is not a brilliant film. The young director quite unnecessarily tried to cram her story into rather hackneyed feature film clichés and give it a patently moralizing ending. On the other hand, it is worth noting that this debuting director has managed to show the truth about a shameful fragment of our reality which no one portrayed in Polish cinema before. The audience numbers for Mall Girls are probably the best proof that there were people out there who needed this truth and were waiting for it.
Lankosz, Borowski, Rosłaniec are debutants by the nature of things. However, 2009 also saw directors with substantial achievements in other cinematic genres taking their first steps in feature filmmaking. One example is Piotr Dumała, an excellent maker of animated films, who presented his experimental Las / The Forest at the last Gdynia festival (Jury's Special Prize for extraordinary artistic value), a film whose title could just as well have been "All About My Father". This is a project born of the director's very personal experience, in which a poetic metaphor is juxtaposed in a rather risky manner with images that are definitely naturalistic. Nevertheless the director manages to maintain a balance between the symbolic and the literal, creating a moving vision of the "transition zone" where everything ends and something, perhaps, begins. No one has spoken so "visually" about death in Polish cinema before.
This was also the year of the cinematic release of Jacek Bławut's feature debut - Jeszcze nie wieczór / Before Twilight (the film, set in a retirement home for actors, won the Silver Lions at the Gdynia festival the previous year). In this project, the experienced cameraman and author of excellent documentaries merges fiction with documentary-type recording. On the one hand, Before Twilight pays homage to the doyens of Polish theatre stages and film sets, while attempting to deal with the subject of the passage of time on the other. In the end, in a way by virtue of their profession, the actors testify with their own bodies and faces to how the form of the world fades away. Jacek Bławut shows this passing with tact and humour. And the fact that he does it in a slightly exaggerated, cloying manner? It is a convention I personally don't mind.
The year 2009 finally saw the cinematic release, two years after the film's production, of the feature debut of Dariusz Jabłoński (a documentary filmmaker and producer) - an adaptation of Andrzej Stasiuk's Opowieści galicyjskie / Tales of Galicia. In all, it is quite a successful adaptation. Wino truskawkowe / Strawberry Wine, as the film is titled, is worthy of attention particularly for Tomasz Michałowski's cinematography and Michał Lorenc's music as well as Jiří Macháček in the role of a Warsaw policeman who fled all the way to the Slovakian border to escape his life's trauma. One could voice numerous reservations, too - some of the sequences are obviously "let go", others don't have a clear point to them, others still are too verbose - but Jabłoński has managed to show the borderland region as a non-obvious land where, according to Stasiuk, there is more space than actual geography suggests. Jabłoński manages to capture this mythical "spatial" surplus, for example in the scene where four guys on Christmas Eve sing Janusz Laskowski's "Beata"{C} instead of a Christmas carol.
Debuts are one thing (and we could mention the excessively hysterical Moja krew / My Flesh, My Blood by Marcin Wrona, and the over-the-top comedy Operacja Dunaj / Operation Danube by Jacek Głomb), but they say the greatest test for directors is always their second film. Wojciech Smarzowski certainly passed this test with flying colours, as his Dom zły / The Dark House is easily the best Polish film of 2009 (winning the awards for best director, best screenplay, and best editing at the Gdynia festival). Like Lankosz, Smarzowski also delves into the past, in his case it is the late 1970s and early 1980s, although his purpose is not quite so pleasant. The essence of The Dark House is not black humour, as it was in Reverse, but deep despair. The story of a heinous crime committed in a village in the Bieszczady Mountains and the ensuing police investigation is an excuse to show - in raw tones - the hell that was People's Poland. From the point of view of content, this is certainly a "local" story, but its artistic form, worked out to the tiniest detail - note the density of film matter and the multiple dimensions! - gives it a universal scope. Credit is due also to the actors, whom Smarzowski yet again gave - as he did in his debut, Wesele / The Wedding - a fantastic opportunity to show what he was made of, alongside Arkadiusz Jakubik, Marian Dziędziel, and Bartłomiej Topa. Krzysztof Ptak's cinematography (Silver Frog at the last Camerimage) is another invaluable element, providing the film message with an unusually sensual intensity. The final shot is especially memorable, showing a view from above onto what is really a landscape after the battle of evil with a lesser evil. It's hard not to ask who's that guy looking at this communist battlefield from up above.
Of course, considering when the action is set, The Dark House has to be seen as a historical film - but only in a way. Its theme, just as much as the past, is the present. By invoking images of People's Poland, Smarzowski is trying to tell us that the non-reality of that time, whether we like it or not, keeps leaving its mark on present-day reality, and that we will not rid ourselves quickly of the traces of the communist past. This awareness is increasingly becoming visible in all of Polish cinema, which appears to have been struck with amnesia after 1989 and forgotten about the entity known as People's Poland (Stanisław Bareja's old comedies seemed to have said it all). It was not until 2008 that Michał Rosa and his Rysa / Scratch (best film award at the International Art House Film Festival in Batumi, 2009) restored the short-term memory of our film industry, showing us that until accounts are settled with our yesterday, our today will stay condemned to a moral obliqueness. Now others have followed Michał Rosa's example. In fact one might even say there is an account-settling trend in Polish cinema. The Dark House is just one case in point.
Squaring things with the past, our filmmakers naturally resort to different strategies. Some, like Ryszard Bugajski, settle accounts for wrongs and build film monuments to heroes (Generał Nil / General Nil), others, like Feliks Falk, use the forms of genre cinema to help us realize that nothing is ever either black or white (Enen / Case Unknown). Some, like Rafał Wieczyński, try using a historical poster formula to make "saints" more human and bring them closer to the sensitivity of today's audiences, especially young people (Popiełuszko. Wolność jest w nas / Popieluszko. Freedom Is Within Us), others, like Janusz Morgenstern, use the poetics of a mock-heroic tale to demystify the "urban legends" related to the Polish underground (Mniejsze zło / The Lesser Evil). And then there is the unpretentious Wszystko co kocham / All That I Love by Jacek Borcuch in which the reality of martial law forms the backdrop for a nostalgic tale of youngsters growing up to love, rebellion, and music (the film is due to be released in early 2010). At this point it needs to be said openly that this diversity in how our film directors approach the past is really impressive. Especially in view of the fact that the aforementioned films - regardless of any reservations - represent quite decent cinema (Bugajski's picture is worth a special mention).
Let us go back for a moment to the "test" of the second film. As mentioned earlier, Smarzowski passed with excellent marks, and Maciej Pieprzyca also did quite well with his Silesian Drzazgi / Splinters. The most famous project in the "second film" category in 2009, though, was surely Xawery Żuławski's Wojna polsko-ruska / Snow White and Russian Red, based on Dorota Masłowska's novel. This film was greatly popular with audiences, also winning recognition at the Gdynia festival where it received the "Silver Lion" and an award for Best Sound, with leading actor Borys Szyc taking home the Best Actor award. Is it a good film? The director is certainly proficient. It is hard to resist the impression, however, that his visually spectacular work is strangely empty as far as content is concerned. There is something of an over-stylised blown egg about it. Maybe it's because Żuławski managed to transfer the story of Masłowska's novel to the screen quite faithfully, but had problems with the spirit of the thing. Meanwhile, the essence of Masłowska's prose is not in the action but in the narrative. It is all about playing with language. In Żuławski's film the language sounds very literal and somewhat outdated.
The tone in Polish cinema in 2009 was unquestionably set by debuting and middle-generation directors. That is cause for celebration, or at least a casual cocktail party. On the other hand, mature filmmakers had something to offer as well. One major event was the premiere of Tatarak / Sweet Rush, because any film by Andrzej Wajda is an event in its own right. Especially since the director has returned to the source, namely the short stories of Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz which he once used to adapt so faithfully, to mention Panny z Wilka / The Maids from Wilko. In Sweet Rush, he tried to combine Iwaszkiewicz's tale about death with Krystyna Janda's very personal monologue about the dying of her husband. On the one hand, we have pure fiction, and on the other, the tangible and painful issue of reality. These two levels do not make a cohesive whole in the film, they seem to function separately, neither commenting on nor helping each other out. Moreover, the inappropriate, excessive staging diminishes the truth of a genuine experience and does not allow it to translate onscreen in Sweet Rush. That, at least, is the opinion of the author of this review, who feels duty-bound to admit that many critics and reviewers are of a different opinion and consider Wajda's film experiment a very successful one. This is proved, among other things, by the Alfred Bauer Prize (for defining new horizons in film art - more...) presented to the director at the last film festival in Berlin, and also the FIPRESCI Prize which Sweet Rush received from critics linked to the European Film Academy (more...). It seems you really cannot be a prophet in your own land...
You don't have to be a prophet to see Jan Jakub Kolski's latest project, Afonia i pszczoły / Afonia and the Bees, as a failure. There is no trace in it of the magic so characteristic of the director's earlier pictures. Only mannerism remains. After Jasminum, Afonia... offers yet more proof that Jan Jakub Kolski has been going through a crisis of content in recent years. He knows how to tell a story, but has no story to tell. The situation is kind of the opposite with Mariusz Grzegorzek, but the result is similar. His latest film, Jestem twój / I Am Yours (screened at the last Gdynia festival), is also painfully affected.
In discussing the achievements of Polish cinema in 2009, one must not forget to mention Agnieszka Holland and Kasia Adamik's Janosik. Prawdziwa historia / Janosik: The True Story. This is quite a good production, especially seeing as it was made in two stages with a six-year hiatus in between. Luckily this break is completely unnoticeable in the film: naturalism fluidly blends here with poetry, and genre scenes merge without clashing with visions, surprisingly forming a cohesive whole, sometimes extraordinarily moving in its visual beauty. Try as hard as they might, though, the filmmakers have failed to turn Janosik into a modern-day idol. Apparently today's audiences prefer heroes from completely different worlds.
Janosik is a Polish-Hungarian-Czech-Slovakian co-production. It was not the only project released in 2009 in which Poland was a co-producer. Other co-productions included Petr Zelenka's Karamazovi / The Karamazovs and Sergei Dvortsevoy's Tulpan. Both films - made in 2008 - are brilliant works. The former picture is a narrative on Czech actors staging a play based on Dostoyevsky's novel at a factory in Nowa Huta, while the romantic plot of the latter unfolds on the faraway steppe of Kazakhstan. Both films - one theatrical, the other exotic - touch on issues surprisingly close to our hearts, here and now. Zelenka's The Karamazovs won him two awards from the Czech Film Academy, one for best film and the other for best director. Cinematographer Jolanta Dylewska won an Asian Film Award for Tulpan at the film festival in Hong Kong.
Speaking of international awards, we should mention the Jury's Special Prize which Gerwazy Reguła won in Svetlogorsk (6th Baltic Debuts Film Festival) for Droga do raju / Earthly Paradise, and also the prizes which Jacek Bromski and his U Pana Boga w ogródku / In God's Little Garden won in Houston (WorldFest Independent Film Festival) - the Special Jury Prize, the award for best full-length foreign film, and the Golden Award for music. Bromski was also an award-winner in Nanchang (Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival) for directing U Pana Boga za miedzą / God's Little Village. At the Moscow International Film Festival, Waldemar Krzystek's Mała Moskwa / Little Moscow won the Audience Award. Wiesław Saniewski's Bezmiar sprawiedliwości / Immensity of Justice won a special prize from the Association of Film Critics in Russia at the Vistula Festival of Polish Films. In Mlada Boleslav (Festival of European Film Smiles), Tomasz Konecki's Idealny facet dla mojej dziewczyny / The Perfect Guy for My Girlfriend won the award for best European film. One should also mention the Special Prize from the International Children's Film Festival in Oulu which Andrzej Maleszka received for his Magiczne drzewo / The Magic Tree, and also the festival in Alatri (Saturno International Film Festival) at which one of the main awards went to Ryszard Bugajski's General Nil. A Special Prize, this time in Les Arcs in France (European Film Festival), was awarded to Robert Gliński's Świnki / Piggies. It is also worth noting that the best actress award at the International Film Festival for Women in Zimbabwe went to Alina Janowska for her role in Izabela Szylko's Niezawodny system / The Reliable System. And, last but not least, Jacek Borcuch's Wszystko co kocham / All That I Love qualified for the main competition of the Sundance festival of independent films (more...). It is the first Polish film in competition at this prestigious festival.
Author: Lech Kurpiewski, December 2009