The year is 1997 and the big flood is approaching Wrocław. As a psychiatric hospital is being evacuated, a young doctor Konstanty (Kostek) Gordon comes across a mysterious patient, Paweł Płocki, whose name does not appear in hospital files. Intrigued, Kostek tries to use a therapy - to little enthusiasm from his superiors and colleagues. Establishing the inmate's identity proves next to impossible, but Kostek does not lose hope and brings the patient to his house despite the hospital rules and his family's protest. The favourable impact of the therapy encourages Kostek to intensify his efforts and he manages to find the psychiatrist who accepted Płocki into the hospital twenty years before. The psychiatrist's is evasive, but, pressed by Kostek, divulges the horrible circumstances of that event. Has the young doctor woken up the devil while helping the soul which got lost in the bureaucratic machine?
Feliks Falk, once a leading representative of the "cinema of moral concern", the director of Wodzirej / Top Dog and Komornik / The Collector and winner of the Złote Lwy / Golden Lions Grand Prix at the 2005 Gdynia Polish Film Festival and the Orzeł / Eagle Polish Film Award for Directing, was inspired by a true story which appeared in the press. However, Falk is more interested in mechanisms than facts, and although the shocking truth discovered by the young psychiatrist dates back to the times before the breakthrough year of 1980, its mechanism can be set in motion nowadays, too. Enen / Case Unknown is a warning against it - and more, for there a number of references to the acclaimed One Flew Over the Cuckoo Nest and its key characters: McMurphy and, even more so, Chief Bromden. Like in Ken Kesey's novel and Milos Forman's film, it is the relationships between the characters which are essential.
Despite the thriller-like plot, Enen reverberates with the echoes of the "cinema of moral concern." The young psychiatrist does his job with genuine passion and total devotion to his patients, and to explain the mysterious case of Paweł Płocki he will break the law and jeopardize not only his career but also his family life and the safety of his family. Does he, however, realize how dangerous the game is? Who the catatonic whom he is trying to wake up will turn out to be? And, regardless of the circumstances which become revealed, are such great risks worth taking? During the film's promotional campaign, Falk confided:
"Some have tried to persuade me to dot all the i's and say that if the patient's could be woken up from his catatonic-like condition he would be a danger to the community. Or to have Kostek, once he discovers the truth, abandon the patient or keep him with himself, change his attitude to psychiatry or quit the job altogether. I, however, preferred to leave certain things unsaid. After all, a film is a conversation with the audience and it is them that I want to have the last say. ... The society feels uncomfortable about otherness; remember that the communist regime abused psychiatry - take the Soviet psychiatric wards and 'asymptomatic schizophrenia' which afflicted the dissidents. However, it has not ended with the demise of communism. ... While the historical context is important for structural reasons in 'Enen', its is not crucial. To me it served as a pretext to show the moral choices which people had to make before 1980 and the lessons which Kostek learns about people."
Falk was very particular about the film's cast, and gave the psychiatrist's role to Borys Szyc, for whom it was a special experience given that the shooting of Enen started just two weeks after Xawery Żuławski finished his work on Wojna polsko-ruska / Snow White and Russian Red, where Szyc had played a totally mentally as well as physically different character. The cast includes also Grzegorz Wolf, a Gdynia-based actor who demonstrates his professional maturity in the role of the catatonic patient, and Magdalena Walach, the star of the popular series Twarzą w twarz / Face to Face, as the wife.
- Enen / Case Unknown, Poland 2009. Written (with the assistance of Agnieszka Holland) and directed by Feliks Falk, photography: Arkadiusz Tomiak, music: Bartłomiej Gliniak, art manager: Teresa Gruber, costumes: Małgorzata Obłoza, editor: Krzysztof Szpetmański, sound: Sebastian Brański, Tomasz Dukszta. Starring: Borys Szyc (Konstanty Gordon), Grzegorz Wolf (Paweł Płocki), Magdalena Walach (Renata Gordon), Krzysztof Stroiński (Ambroziak), Marian Opania (Professor Dębicki), Ewa Ziętek (Ewa's mother), Elżbieta Karkoszka (Konstanty's mother) and others. Produced by Wytwórnia Filmów Dokumentalnych i Fabularnych. Co-financed by the Polish Film Institute. Duration: 100 minutes. Released on 4th September 2009.
Author: Konrad J. Zarębski, May 2009
