BLACK VS. BRIGHT: GDYNIA’S FILM COLOURS
During my first class session, I always ask students what they think on Polish cinematography, assuming that most of them will share the engineer Mamoń’s view on the subject – bore, bore again, plots you forget to follow… lousy actors and same dialogues. This time the main objection concerns extremity: in Polish films you can see either rattling apartment houses and life as pictured in colourful magazines, as in Tylko mnie kochaj, or dreary disheartening housing projects of the poverty-stricken, as in Cześć, Tereska. Generalisations are unfair, but not completely untrue, and the worth of domestic cinematographic productions – with our attendance in international film contests remaining at trace level – can be best tested at the Gdynia Polish Film Festival, the contest reported on by “Kino”, in the November 2006 edition of the monthly.
In the article Czarno czy różowo, czyli jacy jesteśmy naprawdę? (Black or pink, what are we really like ), Bożena Janicka, Andrzej Kołodyński and Tadeusz Szyma discuss the latest, 31th Festival of Polish Feature Films (FPFF). The article title may seem to suggest that my students are not the only ones for whom Polish cinematography is taking its trends to extremes. In the backstages of the festival, the films were categorised into ‘dark’ (or ‘black’, as they were literarily referred to in Polish) and ‘cheery’. Any political context was not meant to be the issue in either of the two cases: the films deal with Polish reality, but describe it on the microscales of a family or small community.
Plac Zbawiciela by Joanna Kos-Krauze and Krzysztof Krauze falls into such film category. The film has been acknowledged the best picture of the festival and awarded the Golden Lions prize. It also holds the number one position in the film critics’ ranking presented in the latest issue of the ‘Kino’ magazine. I find it hard to share Bożena Janicka’s opinion that “although the film is honest in the way of presenting facts, and though it reveals reality in nearly photographic detail, it fails to be universally true, which makes it unattractive and unappealing to foreign audience”. Is the film really so totally unsurprising in that it reveals nothing we have not seen before? To me, not completely. True, the plot of the film (and at this point, I refer the readers to the interview Ani dobrzy, ani źli published in the October 2006 edition of ‘Kino’) is a ‘real life story’: the film directors had browsed through six sets of back issues of “Super Express” tabloid newspaper, first choosing one thousand articles of all the texts and then narrowing the pile down to twelve. The texts were supposed to provide ideas for a series of TV films based on true stories. One of them would be directed by the Krauze couple, the rest – by other filmmakers. But only Robert Gliński seemed to be interested enough to undertake the project, so the whole idea was given up. However, the thought to make Plac Zbawiciela matured gradually into a serious undertaking, and the filming started yet before the shooting of Mój Nikifor. Devoting so much time to work on the project is an unusual occurrence in Poland, as is filming it on a basis of teamwork: the picture was made with financial contribution from the cameraman and actors playing the leading parts. Such collective work was possible thanks to the idea of employing less known actors who were not so much in public domain, especially Jowita Budnik, once known as Miondlikowska. The Krauzes had written the role of Beata she plays in the film especially for her. As for Budnik’s film partners, the role of her husband was played by Arkadiusz Janiczek (his face could be spotted by observant audience in Złotopolscy TV series), and Ewa Wencel played her mother-in-law (the actress appeared in M jak miłość TV series, or who can still remember her act in the early 80’s TV theatre Małgosia kontra Małgosia?). As a result, the characters are not flat, their portraits are multidimensional and more credible as the actors had not yet been labelled with one – either big movie or TV series – image. The two female parts have been awarded at the festival, and the fact speaks for itself. And what Beata and Bartek – the film characters – go through, really could happen to anyone. About a story like theirs we could hear either in a TV commentary like Sprawa dla reportera (for example a story of a group of tenants deceived by a dishonest developer but promised financial support by a politician), or we could see it as an episode of a soap opera. We could (should?) expect a happy end in both cases, though we would not take it for granted in the case of the first. Sometimes it happens that after seeing a given story onscreen, a clerk refreshes in his memory a suitable regulation that could be applied. But in the world of soap opera fiction, the baddy sooner or later – but always – is punished, and the ordeal in the life of a family only strengthens the bonds among its members. It does not happen so in the film, though. Financial struggle for existence is not the only cause of the tragedy the characters are put through, but it, as if, expedites the time in which happens what is bound to happen next. Thus, it seems unfair to perceive the film as a picture solely devoted to matters concerning social problems (no matter how such productions are still needed and keep the audience up to date). The fears that foreign audience after seeing the film would remember only this one fact that it is safer in Poland to buy a flat after it is completed – seem totally unfounded, either. [By the way, I don’t quite see why it was Z odzysku by Sławomir Fabicki that was decided to be the Polish candidate for the Oscar prize; the degree to which the two films are (not?) universal and – let’s call it – targeted at the locals, seems comparable]. I will spare you the details as not everyone reading this may have seen the film, but I can only agree with those for whom Plac Zbawiciela is one of most important pictures of the last years. A kind of picture which does not make you cry, but which makes you feel it down in the pit of your stomach. A kind of picture which simply hurts.
Although Plac Zbawiciela escapes any definition of a film category – at least to me – the film would be probably classified as ‘black’. Such productions prevailed at the festival in Gdynia, the examples are Co słonko widziało by Michał Rosa (a film about the realities of life in Silesia), Wszyscy jesteśmy Chrystusami by Marek Koterski, or the abovementioned full-length film début of Fabicki. The ‘cheery’ pictures made up a definite minority – Jasminum by Jan Jakub Kolski, or Statyści by Michał Kwieciński, with the latter winning the Golden Klakier prize, that is the people’s choice award. The success of Statyści was achieved thanks to a brilliant idea for the plot (a group of Chinese filmmakers assuming that we are a gloomy, cheerless nation, and making this social feature a main criterion while casting extras), and was also a result of what contemporary audience do expect, that is to have a bit of a laugh. Not long ago my students told me they really liked Piętro wyżej, more – they said this 1937’s comedy was far better to them than most of same film genre productions made in the last decade or so, including Kiler. “It has such a great, specific kind of humour”, they argued. Right. But it would be great indeed if we could find a filmmaker able to suss out the humour secret and come up with a contemporary comedy, following the recipe for success. Nothing to laugh about really if the Amber Lions prize, the biggest box office success award, was won by a trivial and completely abstract picture entitled Tylko mnie kochaj.
Feliks Falk, the jury president of the festival, said in an interview that a few really interesting films had been made, but the titles of all the rest would soon fade away. Which ones did he mean – those awarded or the big losers, those made by experienced directors like Krauze or Kolski, or by young filmmakers represented by Fabicki, Guziński, Żuławski? As always, it all depends on distributors’ risk-taking bents, but I guess time will tell best: if in 70 years or so, after watching any of those films, someone is going to say he likes it, or that it surpasses what he has seen recently, it will mean big success. Pity though that anyone interested in what is going to happen, including me, has rather little chance to see it.
Katarzyna Wajda
Translated by Dominika Szkoda
The article comes from the monthly Kino issue no. 11/2006