Wrooklyn Zoo – Krzysztof Skonieczny | #film

Wrooklyn Zoo – Krzysztof Skonieczny

The Shakespeare-inspired teenage melodrama in Skonieczny’s film transforms into a tribute to turn-of-the-century Wrocław. His ‘Wrooklyn Zoo’ is an impressive but incoherent film, pulsating with energy but too often verging on graphomania.

When Krzysztof Skonieczny made his feature debut with Hardkor Disko ten years ago, he instantly became the new hope of Polish cinema. Expectations for him rose even higher when Blinded by the Lights, based on the novel by Jakub Żulczyk, which he directed, broke into the list of cult Polish series. Standing on the set of Wrooklyn Zoo, Skonieczny therefore had to face the gigantic expectations of viewers and critics. However, he did not let those paralyse him, and in the film he created, he proved his own artistic independence and courage. Does this mean that Wrooklyn Zoo is a successful film? Well, not necessarily. The story of a young skateboarder (Mateusz Okuła), who is preparing for a competition that will open the door to his sports career, the beautiful Romka (Natalia Szmidt), the object of his desire, and his alcoholic grandfather, is both banal and gibberish.

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WROOKLYN ZOO | Oficjalny zwiastun | Kino Świat

Krzysztof Skonieczny takes us to a spiritual reality of memories and imaginings of the past. He returns to the times of his youth, bringing turn-of-the-century Wrocław to life on screen. But the world of Wrooklyn Zoo does not realistically reproduce the reality of the late 1990s, but mixes it with fantasies and memories distorted by time. Skinheads roam the streets of ‘Wrooklyn’, young skaters soar over ramps scattered around the city, and local Roma live in a segregated ghetto. Heroes of the youthful imagination of the time look at us from the posters in the rooms of the teenage protagonists, but the language of some of the dialogue is thoroughly contemporary.

In Wrooklyn Zoo, the director thus invokes a reality suspended outside of time. But the problem with his film is not the internal logic of the screen universe, but rather the fact that Wrooklyn Zoo succumbs to a surfeit of themes, plots and issues to be resolved. Skonieczny mixes naïve melodrama with a story about a sporting competition, but none of these threads can properly resonate, because they are drowned out by the others waiting in line to be told. And the queue is long, because in addition to a story about growing up, the director also adds a tale of violence and nationalism, post-war displaced persons, intolerance, the Holocaust, Polish guilt from World War II and ghosts roaming the capital of Lower Silesia.

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A still from the film 'Wrooklyn Zoo', dir. Krzysztof Skonieczny, 2024, photo: Tutek Media/Kino Świat

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The overabundance of themes is accompanied at the same time by an aesthetic overload. For Skonieczny mixes different genres, tonalities and styles. A naïve love story is amped up by references to Romeo and Juliet, a revenge film meets a music video, and the aesthetics of offbeat experimentation intermingle with small-scale realism and embarrassment-inducing aesthetic kitsch. Skonieczny boldly plays with cinema, which can and should be appreciated in painfully conservative Polish cinema, but his film does not become any more meaningful because of this. Wrooklyn Zoo gives the impression of a youthful experiment, which unexpectedly often descends into cinematic graphomania.

The film is also not helped by an uneven cast, in which professional actors meet amateurs. The director gives the two main roles to non-professional actors, making them shoulder the burden of the entire story. Thus, Mateusz Okuła, playing the role of the film’s Kosa, delivers his lines as if he were trying to parody Michał Koterski’s peculiar acting style, while Natalia Szmidt, playing the part of the Roma beauty, does little better. The acting shortcomings are all the more evident as the two leads are accompanied in Skonieczny’s film by professional actors endowed with exceptional charisma and screen power. Jan Frycz in the role of the grandfather easily takes over the film screen, while Konrad Eleryk steals successive scenes for himself, creating the magnetic role of a brutal nationalist, in which he clearly draws inspiration from, among others, the character of ‘Jaszczur’ – a Polish YouTuber, a vulgar nationalist preacher reaching out to circles of the radical right.

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A still from the film 'Wrooklyn Zoo', dir. Krzysztof Skonieczny, 2024, photo: Tutek Media/Kino Świat

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Although the film’s poster promises that it is a story of love that will set the world ablaze, in Skonieczny’s film the fire consumes only a small summer house. In Wrooklyn Zoo, the characters' feelings are secondary, and the director is more interested in effective juggling of film patterns and styles than in the characters and their love. And although the new picture by the author of Hardkor Disko may impress with its formal courage and excellent editing (by Sebastian Mialik, winner of the Best Editing award at the 2024 Polish Film Festival in Gdynia), these strengths are undermined by narrative gibberish and aesthetic kitsch, which instead of engagement evokes only a sense of embarrassment.

Wrooklyn Zoo. Written and directed by: Krzysztof Skonieczny. Cinematography: Adam Pietkiewicz. Scenography: Stefania Strzałkowska-Rajca, Maciej Strzałkowski-Rajca. Costumes: Zofia Komasa. Sound: Bartosz Putkiewicz. Editing: Sebastian Mialik. Starring: Mateusz Okuła, Natalia Szmidt, Jan Frycz, Konrad Eleryk.