Scarborn – Paweł Maślona | #film

Scarborn – Paweł Maślona

In ‘Scarborn’, Paweł Maślona rejects the textbook portrayal of Kościuszko the ‘hero’ in favour of a Tarantino-like story in the spirit of Gombrowicz and Munk.

In this film, the Polish nobility takes the hardest hit. Maślona not only distances himself from the mythology of the Sarmatian past, he even ridicules it. At best, the noblemen in Scarborn are beautiful men in fine robes who fight a losing battle in the name of honour, and at worst... narrow-minded fools who despise peasants, petty and brutal cowards with big egos who bully the weak. Even the dying magnate, who has undergone a religious conversion, will turn out to be less progressive and enlightened than we would like to think.

Describing Poland at the end of the 18th century, Paweł Maślona and scriptwriter Michał A. Zieliński show a country divided internally and the nobility as a group focused only on class interests, its own wealth and comfort. The guide in this world is Tadeusz Kościuszko, ‘Kos’ (Jacek Braciak), who returns from America in a blaze of glory to organise an uprising against the Russian occupier. Together with his Black companion Domingo (Jason Mitchell), he travels through the Polish countryside, seeking the support of the local nobility and trying to convince them to involve the peasantry in the liberation battle.

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KOS (teaser) – wkrótce w kinach

Maślona makes a bold move in his film. Although Kościuszko is the title character of the film, he is not the main character at all. This role is played by Ignac (Bartosz Bielenia), a bastard sired by a rich nobleman who, after his father’s death, wants to bring about the implementation of a will under which he is to become one of the heirs to the estate. In order to do this, the young farmhand sets off on a journey to Kraków and his fate is intertwined with that of Kościuszko and the uprising in preparation.

However, the heroes’ adventures do not form a story about a patriotic uprising, and Maślona is not interested in a heroic fresco of battle. His Scarborn combines elements of Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds and Django, perverse tales of emancipation dressed in a historical costume, with the intellectual heritage of Witold Gombrowicz and Andrzej Munk, the chief anti-romantic of Polish cinema. In Scarborn, an adventurous swashbuckler tale is transformed into a story of peasant rebellion, of people discovering their strength and dignity, going beyond the roles assigned to them and rejecting the existing divisions. While contemporary cinema still persistently reproduces untrue clichés about peasant life (the manor house sequences in The Pilecki Report being the most recent evidence), Maślona and Zieliński draw on the latest research into village life and demand the historical truth about class divisions and systemic errors that led to the downfall of the Polish Republic.

Tadeusz Kościuszko as Artist and Artisan – Image Gallery

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But Scarborn is also a reckoning with Polish national vices. It is a story of feuding mythomaniacs prone to flashiness but incapable of systematic, collaborative work, of class violence and the Polish messiah complex. In Maślona’s film, not only are the major Polish sins explicitly named, but the director goes even further – he has them named by the film’s antagonist, the Russian cavalryman Dunin (Robert Więckiewicz), who speaks here of a nation that believes in ‘God, honour and the homeland’, but puts honour, its own ambitions and egoism before the homeland, thus pushing itself into the hands of powerful neighbours.

Scarborn is a bitter read, and the phenomenal final scene, in which a heartbroken Kościuszko looks at the faces of his future brothers-in-arms, is a painful commentary on Polish heroism. At the same time, Paweł Maślona’s film holds its own perfectly as an example of efficiently realised entertainment cinema. For in the script Michał A. Zieliński has successfully combined an adventure intrigue full of chases, shoot-outs and duels with a historical fresco, and whenever the atmosphere of the film becomes too serious, he counterpoints it with comedic accents. In Maślona’s hands, his text has come alive, gaining staging momentum and brilliance (the Inglourious Basterds-inspired scene of a card duel is proof of this). All this makes Scarborn one of the best cinematic spectacles we have seen in Polish cinema in recent years, or even decades. As always, the excellent cinematography by Piotr Sobociński Jr., the unconventional music by Mikołaj Trzaska and the acting performances, among which it is hard to find a single unsuccessful one (Bartosz Bielenia, Robert Więckiewicz, Jacek Braciak, Agnieszka Grochowska and Piotr Pacek certainly deserve a mention), make Paweł Maślona’s picture a must-see. Also for young viewers, for whom Scarborn will be an antidote to school readings about heroic Polish history.

Scarborn. Directed by: Paweł Maślona. Screenplay: Michał A. Zieliński. Cinematography: Piotr Sobociński Jr. Music: Mikołaj Trzaska. Starring: Bartosz Bielenia, Robert Więckiewicz, Jacek Braciak, Agnieszka Grochowska, Piotr Pacek.

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