Hands Up! begins with a homecoming from medical school – a good opportunity for looking back on one’s life. In the first scene, we see Leszczyc (Jerzy Skolimowski) reading an accusatory letter written, supposedly, by an absent colleague. The medics, offended by the pamphlet, decide to visit the author and hop on a freight train (as Andrzej tells the guards: ‘it’s appropriate enough for these wretches’). The bigger part of the film plays out in the wagon, but one has to mention that the world depicted here is entirely conventional: the scenography brings to mind theatrical decorations, the setting is flat and one-dimensional and the characters emerge from the shadows like spectres to recite their lines. In this unusual space, a psychotherapeutic séance of sort takes place.
For his fear of responsibility – Lord, forgive him. For not picking up the phone when he was called for help – Lord, forgive him. For abusing his position – Lord, forgive him.
In one scene, the medics lay out the litany over their sleeping colleague and it could refer to any of the gathered, conscious of their cowardice and conformism. In another scene, characters reminisce of events from the time of Stalin-era Poland, when, as students, they pledged to create an enormous portrait of Stalin as a social service, but, due to neglect, they destroyed the portrait and made a laughingstock out of the ‘leader’. After the event, the friends did not show solidarity, instead, almost every one of them tried to cowardly defend himself or herself. However, their submissiveness and lack of ambition have stayed with them to their adult life. It is not by chance that the names of the characters are car brands such as Zastawa (the nickname of Leszczyc), Opel Rekord (Tadeusz Łomnicki), Romeo (Adam Hanuszkiewicz), Wartburg (Bogumił Kobiela) and Alfa (Joanna Szczerbic). The 30-year-olds do not want to repair the world but to fight the system and they are satisfied with the cheap consumerism of the ‘little stabilisation’ era.