Viva Belarus! (orig. Żywie Biełaruś!) [2012]

MPAA (UR would be R)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing
Filmweb.pl listing*
Eastbook.eu (V. Kustava) review*
Filmy.Newsweek.pl (A. Stankiewicz & P. Śmiłowicz) review*
Film.Onet.pl (L. Kurpiewski) review*
ObliczaKultury.pl (M. Goetz) review*
PlasterLodzki.pl (M. Janik) review*

Viva Belarus! (orig. Żywie Biełaruś!) [2012] [IMDb] [FW.pl]* (directed and cowritten by Krzysztof Łukaszewicz [IMDb] [FW.pl]* as well as Franak Viačorka [IMDb] [FW.pl]*) played recently at the 25th Annual Polish Film Festival in America held in Chicago between Nov 8-24, 2013.

Franak Viačorka [IMDb] [FW.pl]*[YouTubeCh] is the son Vincuk Viačorka of a Belarusian nationalist who had been repeatedly harassed and jailed by authorities during Franak's childhood for his defense of Belarusian language and identity in their home Belarus.  A DOCUMENTARY IN ITS ENTIRETY (English subtitled) largely about the father and son and the pro-democracy movement in Belarus as of 2006 can be found on YouTube under the title "A Lesson of Belarusian."

Belarus has long been a borderland region between Catholic and Orthodox Christiandom.  To the West were Roman Catholic/Latin-alphabet using Poland and Lithuania, while to the east was Orthodox Christian/Cyrillic alphabet using Russia.   In previous centuries, the general region was identified on maps as Ruthenia, with Belarus sometimes called "White Ruthenia."  Byelorussia ("White Russia") was also an administrative region in Czarist Russia and a constituent "Soviet Socialist Republic" of the Soviet Union always with Minsk as its capital.  Between World Wars I and II, the western half of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Byelorussia (with boundaries redrawn) as well as today's Belarus had been part of Poland. 

I know _a little_ about the region for a couple of reasons: (1) a constituent part of my parents' pre-WW II Czechoslovakia was a region called Podkarpatská Rus (Sub-Carpathian Rus/Ruthenia) and (2) in my work as a (Roman) Catholic priest, I would run occasionally into folks who would identify themselves as having followed (or their parents having followed) the Ruthenian Rite.  A follower of the Ruthenian Rite would have been an Eastern or Byzantine Catholic following the Eastern/Byzantine Liturgy though in union with the Pope in Rome.  A Ruthenian Catholic would distinguish him/herself from a general Eastern/Byzantine Rite Catholic (a Greek Catholic or a Ukrainian Catholic) in that the Liturgy would be celebrated in the Ruthenian/Rusyn (or Belorusian...) language.


All this is to respond to those (both in the West and ... in the East...) who would ask "Is there a Belarusian culture or language?" that to the people of Belarus, the answer would a rather emphatic yes.  According to the 1999 census in Belarus, 36.7% declared it as the "language spoken at home," and 85.6% as their "mother tongue."  And yet, despite Belarusian (along with Russian) having an "equal status" according to Belarus' own Constitution, the indigenous Belarusian language remains often discouraged by the Russian-preferring regime dominated by Belarus' president, more-or-less for life, Alexander Lukashenko, a regime that remains more or less obviously allied with Russia to the East and remains "more Soviet" (still is effectively run by one party, Lukashenko's, still has collective farms, still retains the old Byelorussian SSR flag minus the hammer and sickle...) than post-Communist Russia itself.

This then forms the historical/political/cultural backdrop to the current film, which is based in good part on Franak Viačorka's life.

Franak's alter-ego in the film, Miron (played by Dźmitry Vinsent Papko [IMDb] [FW.pl]*) begins the film as something of a cheerful "slacker," or lead guitarist of a not particularly remarkable Belarusian punk band with a typically somewhat "over the top" / pretentious, young testosterone driven name "Forza" (meaning "Power") not particularly interested in politics but rather mostly in girls and letting off steam.  When one of his band's concerts goes a little overboard, however, with a band-member perhaps having had too much to drink (or perhaps simply swept-up by the emotion of playing onstage in a club at a rock concert...) starts chanting "Long live Belarus!" (which becomes the film's title...) and the young people in the club start chanting this as well, the aghast/jittery Stalinist authorities decide it's time to "regain control."  Tear gas canisters get thrown on stage and into the crowd and baton wielding riot police storm the place, quickly bringing to an end a show that in a normal country would have posed no more of a threat to "order" or "rule of law" than a drunk band-member at our Parish's annual Annunciata Fest starting to chant: "Long Live the East Side" or "Long Live Chicago!" (or perhaps somewhat more provocatively "Viva la East Side" or "Viva Mexico!" ;-)

In any case, the "powers-that-be" were not amused and stormed in.  Then to wreak petty vengeance on this rather average punk band with its somewhat pretentious/young testosterone driven name, the authorities sniff around the backgrounds of the band-members and discover that good ol' Miron had three times gotten a deferment from Belarusian military service and so ... no more.  In the days following that "awesome concert, with like tear gas canisters flying and police batons flailing about ..." (imagine how a 20 year old, any 20 year old would relate that story ...) Miron finds himself summoned to the draft board and ... Drafted.

So where does the Belarusian army send its problematic draftees, those drafted not for their fitness but more out of spite ... well, to a base somewhere near Chernobyl ... basically to a prison / modern day Gulag "that glows..." ;-) or more appropriately :-(.  Note that while Chernobyl itself was located on the Ukrainian side of the Ukranian/Belarusian border, the most contaminated areas as a result of the nuclear disaster there were in Belarus.

But even in Belarus, "Times They Are a Changing ..." So even from this military base for "politically unreliable conscripts" Miron is able to use a clandestine cell-phone to report news of the goings-on at his base to his girlfriend Viera (played in the film by Karolina Gruszka [IMDb] [FW.pl]*) who places his reports somewhat anonymously onto a blog.  (Note this is based on Franak Viačorka's personal experience as after he was drafted into the Belarusian army he maintained a blog called "Life of a Belarusian Solider" published by an independent Belarusian newsoutlet called Belapan to the obvious consternation of the Belarusian military that repeatedly sought to isolate / punish him for this during his time of service.  But he always seemed to get his news out anyway.

Among the most notable abuses that he reported on was the beating of a Belarussian draftee who had refused to take the loyalty oath to the country in Russian but rather insisted that he be allowed to do so in his native Belarusian.  For despite Belarus' nominal independence,  RUSSIAN REMAINED THE ONLY OFFICIAL LANGUAGE until recently IN THE BELARUSIAN ARMY.  Once reported "outside" (by Miron in the film and perhaps in real life by Viačorka through his blog) THAT CONTRADICTION could not stand.  So sometime later, Belarusian was allowed to be used as a second alternate language IN THE BELARUSIAN ARMY (as per its 'equal dignity' guaranteed by the Belarus' Constitution).

Of course much still ensues.  After all, running an independent blog in an authoritarian state pining for "simpler" (totalitarian) times would be expected to be risky business...

And at one point Miron, now more in the spirit of Franak's father Vincuk Viačorka, decides to run for Belarus' Parliament (Vincuk Viačorka had headed Belarus' opposition party the BPF Party from 1999-2007) ... with the expected problems and results.


All in all, the film is a very interesting (and very sad) one, about the Opposition's challenges in trying to bring freedom to Europe's last dictatorship. 

At' žije Bělarusko!


* Foreign language webpages are most easily translated using Google's Chrome Browser.

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Best Man's Holiday [2013]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB (O)  ChiTrib (3 Stars)  RE.com (3 1/2 Stars)  AVClub (B-)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
ChicagoTirbune (M. Phillips) review
RogerEbert.com (O. Henderson) review
AVClub (I. Vishnevetsky) review

I found Best Man's Holiday [2013] (written and directed by Malcolm D. Lee) to be an unexpected surprise. Yes, parents note that the R-rating is deserved.  The film is NOT for kids, but DEFINITELY for parents with kids.  But I honestly found it to be far better than I expected it to be given some of the reviews above.

Further, together with a fair number of African-American films that I've reviewed here in recent years and a number of other African-American films that are scheduled to be released in the coming months, I do have to say that talk of a "Black Hollywood Renaissance" [BBC] [CNN] [Ebony] [HPost] is nnot unwarranted. 

I've come to believe this because of the sheer variety of the African American films (more often than not written/dirrected by African Americans and definitely starring predominantly African American casts) coming out from biopics/history (Fruitvale Station [2013], Lee Daniels: The Butler [2013], 12 Years a Slave [2013], Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom [2013]) to drama (Flight [2012], Tyler Perry's Good Deeds [2012], Tyler Perry's Temptation:Confessions of a Marriage Counselor [2013], Black Nativity [2013]), dramedies (Tyler Perry's Madea's Big Happy Family [2011], and the current film, Best Man's Holiday [2013]) to romcoms (Jumping the Broom [2011], Baggage Claim [2013]) to even action films like Alex Cross [2012] and because ALL of these films, while African American in orientation are UNIVERSAL IN THEME.

Additionally, Chicago hosts a number of excellent African / African American film festivals each year that often get into particulars of African and African American experience.  (Please scroll down my Film Festivals page to check the often excellent films that I've reviewed of this kind).  So honestly, this seems to be a remarkable time to be an African American film-maker or simply a follower of African American films).

So why was I so impressed by this film?  Well, I entered the film with rather low expectations, choosing to see it only after the weekend, on a Monday morning (before noon matinee...) ... expecting it to be something of an African-American Big Chill [1983] in which a number of former college friends (since becoming quite disparate) get together after 10-15 years for a not altogether clear reason to spend a somewhat raunchy, and certainly not particularly edifying weekend reminiscing about a distant past that didn't matter much to most of them anymore (the "Big Chill" wasn't called that for nothing...).

Elements of the "Big Chill" formula are certainly present in this film, actually a 15-years since sequel to an African American young adult dramedy/romcom called The Best Man [1999]: The former friends, many long since grown apart, are invited for initially rather unclear reason to spend the Christmas holiday at the palatial home of the by-far most successful couple of the bunch: NFL football star Lance Sullivan (played by Morris Chestnut) and his wife Mia (played by Monica Calhoun).

And yes, some of the invited guests, often far less successful than the Sullivans, like Lance's former best friend (and his former Best Man), writer, Harper Stewart (played by Taye Diggs) and his wife Robyn (played by Sanaa Lathan) wonder initially why they're being invited now to the Sullivans for, let's face it, as intimate a holiday as Christmas: Was it to show off?  And yes, though all the former friends do accept their invitation, there is friction in the air:

Harper's reeling from (1) having lost his teaching job at NYU (he says, "due to budget cuts...'), (2) having had his latest manuscript rejected by his publisher as unsellable (because his last book had been a flop and there seemed to nothing in the new work that inspired confidence that it would do better) even as (3) it seems that he and Robyn are finally going to have a baby (Robyn's 8 months pregnant after apparently enduring several miscarriages in the past, and the doctor's been warning her that it's not going to be an easy delivery ... it looks like the baby's gonna come out feet first, hence she recommends scheduling a c-section ... to be paid for ... how exactly??).  It's in the midst of all this drama at work and at home, that they get an invitation to come to their rich former friends for Christmas, even though hadn't done much of anything with them in years.

Indeed, one gets the sense that Harper wouldn't go at all if not for the "bug" having been put in his ear by his publisher to see if he could write a book about his retiring über-successful NFL running back friend.   But it's quite literally a "Hail Mary" ...

So they come to the Sullivan's suburban New Jersey estate and (of coruse) it's perfect -- beautiful snow-covered grounds, enormous front room when they with a gigantic Christmas tree standing by a beautiful grand-staircase leading to the upwards, somewhere (almost certainly again "grand and beautiful" ...).  And there to greet them oh so graciously are Mia, Mia and Lance's coutnt them THREE cute as a button kids..., and then Lance who'd seem to prefer to spit to the side rather shake Harper's hand (but Mia seemed to want this holiday to be spent together, so ...).

The other guests come with their own surprises and baggage.    There's Mia's never married, always "busy" former best-friend Jordan (played by Nia Long), also in publishing..., comes to the event with her very decent but also very white (...) boyfriend Brian (played by Eddie Cibrian) from an apparently "old moneyed" WASPish family with roots in the snow covered mountains of Vermont.

There's Quentin (played by Terrence Howard) who's also become quite successful as a NY music producer, but everybody seems to dismiss as slease.

There's education specialist charter-school operator Julian Murch (played by Herald Perrineau) who's been married and since divorced from another "member of the gang" invited to this party, Shelby (played by Melissa De Sausa).

Shelby, in turn, comes to the gathering, with presumably her and Julian's 10 year old daughter, with apparently a goal of causing as much grief as possible to her "goody-two-shoes" ex.  Why?  Presumably because while she's become wildly successful and perhaps wildly more successful than he (by being an actress in a raunchy Desperate Housewives [IMDb]  knockoff called "Real Housewives of Westchester County"), it appeared that Julian (focused on building schools for poor people...) was the one who _dumped_ her.

Yet, Julian comes with a second problem.  It's recently come to his attention that his second and presumably far more virtuous/compatible wife Candace (played by Regina Hall), who also works as HIS FUND-RAISING CHAIR for his School / Foundation "had a past" as well.  A 10-15 year old video had recently appeared on the Internet with her looking like she was prostituting herself at a late-1990s "white boy" Frat Party.  The person who had brought this to his attention had been a major donor to his school/foundation.

This last sub-plot CERTAINLY turns this film into an R-rated NOT FOR KIDS production BUT IT ALSO SERVES AS A REALLY GOOD WARNING TO YOUNG MEN / WOMEN : Your actions DO have consequences and PICTURES / VIDEOS of you doing ALL KINDS OF REALLY STUPID / INAPPROPRIATE (and yes IMMORAL) things CAN COME-UP YEARS LATER TO CAUSE YOU / YOUR LOVED ONES A GREAT DEAL OF PAIN.

So then, the group gets together...  Lance can't stand Harper but puts up with him for the sake of his wife Mia.  Harper, in turn, knows that Lance is still really angry at him (for reasons that we're reminded of eventually) BUT HE NEEDS HIM to save him and his wife/family.

Shelby's there to cause as much trouble to Julian as possible even as Julian has a really complicated problem to "disarm" that could blow-up both his work and his marriage.

And even Jordon, with other things in her life (ie white-boyfriend Brian) comes to the event thrown by her former best friend Mia in good part out of a sense of guilt (toward Mia, "why have we gotten so far apart?") and obligation (toward Harper ... who she thinks she can help by buttering up Lance with regards to Harper's much needed book deal).

So why the heck did Lance and Mia invite all these people together to share such a clearly awkward "Holiday Weekend" together?  Well, the reason, which becomes clear in the second half of the film HONESTLY BLOWS ALL THESE PETTY ISSUES AWAY and honestly makes this film FAR BETTER than I EVER EXPECTED IT TO BE.

I would also add that THIS IS AN AFRICAN AMERICAN MOVIE.  So even though  IT'S A "HOLIDAY MOVIE" ... CHRIST BY NO MEANS  "GOES MISSING" IN THIS CHRIST-MAS FILM.  NO NOT BY A LONG SHOT.

This is an EXCELLENT FILM FOR ADULTS, PARENTS, MARRIED COUPLES.  It is really about what one really believes about EVERYTHING that ought to be important in life (FAMILY, FRIENDS and YES ... ultimately GOD) and then about being both INVITED and yes, at times, CHALLENGED TO "walk the walk."

Even with regard to Candace and her "little incident" put-up on the internet ... there is a story there, and yes, people do dumb things.  AND IF WE BELIEVE ... WE OUGHT TO BE CAPABLE OF FORGIVING THEM especially when it is SO PATENTLY OBVIOUS THAT EITHER THIS WAS A ONE-TIME THING OR THAT THE PERSON HAS SINCE UTTERLY CHANGED.

Honestly, what a film!


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Siberian Exile (orig. Syberiada Polska) [2013]

MPAA (UR would be R)  Historia.org.pl (7/10)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing
FilmWeb.pl listing*
Film.org.pl (R.Oświeciński) review*
Dzennik.pl (J. Demiańczuk) review*
Historia.org.pl (M. Sochoń) review*
Fakty.Bialystok.pl (K. Rutkowski) review*
WNas.pl (P. Zaremba) review*

Siberian Exile (orig. Syberiada Polska) [2013] [IMDb] [FW.pl]*(directed by Janusz Zaorski [IMDb] [FW.pl]*, screenplay by Michał Komar [IMDb] [FW.pl]* and Maciej Dutkiewicz [IMDb] [FW.pl]*, based on the novel (PL-orig) (FR-trans) by Zbigniew Domino [Amazon] [Wikip-PL]*) played recently at the 25th Polish Film Festival in America held in Chicago between Nov 8-24, 2013.
 
The film, the first feature film of its kind, tells the story of the Poles (according to the Kresy-Siberia Virtual Museum as many as 2,000,000) who had been living in the part of pre-WW II Poland that was occupied by the Soviet Union (as part of the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany) who were then deported by the Soviets East to Kazakhstan and Siberia beginning in February, 1940. (The infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact created a very temporary peace between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, allowed Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia to divide Poland between them, and finally allowed Nazi Germany to safely begin World War II with the invasion of Poland without fear of creating a two front war).

I personally buried a 95-year-old parishioner here at Annunciata Parish in Chicago, IL a couple of years ago who along with her family had been among those Poles who were deported.   And I was friends a number years ago over Facebook with a young ethnic Lithuanian from Siberia whose family had been deported there when the same fate came to hundreds of thousands of citizens from the Baltic States of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia following their occupation by Soviet Union (also as part of the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact).

Further, present at the screening of the film, held at Facets Multimedia in Chicago as part 25th Annual Polish Film Festival in America, were not only the film's director Janusz Zaorski [IMDb] [FW.pl]* but also members of several local Chicago families whose Polish parents and grandparents had been part of these deportations as well.  Director Zaorski [IMDb] [FW.pl]* shared after the screening that he made the movie in good part to honor family members who had been among the hundreds of thousands to perhaps millions of Poles deported in this manner.  All this is to say that this is a remarkably important film, again the first of its kind to tell this story of enormous suffering, betrayal and ultimately resilience on the part of the Poles who suddenly found themselves part of the Soviet Union.

The director shared that he filmed this film, with a largely Polish (from Poland) cast IN SIBERIA in and around Krasnoyarsk, the Russian-Siberian city that later became famous for its role in Soviet technological development and its space program) using at times Siberian extras and that the _premiere_ was held in Krasnoyarsk as well, to an audience which turned out to be largely composed of descendants of those hundreds of thousands to several million Polish deportees. The director related to us, attending the screening at Facets in Chicago, that the end of that first screening in Krasnoyarsk, the ethnic Poles present stood-up and sang the Polish national anthem.  Present also at that premiere had been apparently a descendant of one of the NKVD (Stalin era secret-police) prison guards who proceeded to tell the director that his film was "a package of lies" and that the only true sentence of dialogue in the entire film was that of the NKVD camp commandant declaring to one of the Polish deportees that "[he] hated all Poles."  Needless to say, that was one heck of premiere of one heck of a film.

The film itself then ... tells the story of a Polish family that had been living in a village in Eastern pre-WW II Poland prior to the outbreak of war.

The film begins with two yound teenagers, Staś Dolina (played by Paweł Krucz [IMDb] [FW.pl]*) and Cynia (played by Agnieszka Więdłocha [IMDb] [FW.pl]*) doing what a couple of young teenagers, living in the countryside, in love (mostly with life, but also clearly at least partly with each other) could be expected to do ... on a beautiful late summer's day (Sept 1, 1939...): Running along a lovely little pond in the midst the fields and forests of rural Poland (the countryside could have easily been rural Wisconsin or rural Bohemia where my dad's family is originally from) they decide to jump-in.  Modesty of the time (and honestly, modesty of any time) keeps them at least partly clothed (they jump-in in their underwear).  YET, THIS IS NOT AN ORDINARY SUNNY LATE-SUMMER'S DAY ... when they surface, they see a German Skuka dive-bomber dropping a bomb and destroying a nearby and probably previously in the minds of these two kids UTTERLY INCONSEQUENTIAL WOODEN BRIDGE.  World War II has arrived.

The next scene takes place on Sept 17, 1939.  Here the day is cloudy and the peace of the village where Staś and Cynia are from is broken that morning by the buzz of now Soviet aircraft (bi-planed) dropping leaflets and the entry of the Soviet Army (mostly by foot, with the commander on horseback) with a tape-recorded message blaring though a megaphone set on a horse-drawn cart telling the citizenry "Don't be alarmed.  The Invincible Red Army of the Soviet Union has arrived to 'liberate you' from the oppression of the rich peasants who exploit you."  Staś and Cynia's families, though by no means rich, apparently owned fields ...

The third scene takes place in the dead of night, on Feb 10, 1940.  The NKVD comes on horseback and with sleds.   Soviet soldiers / NKVD pound on most of the villagers' doors, waking them up and give them 15 minutes to pack belongings and tell them that they are being moved.  Where?  Not a clue ... but certainly somewhere bad.

The next scene takes place at a train station, the town's name already written in Cyrillic.  Both Staś and Cynia's families are packed on box-cars (along with most of the other families from the village) and ... in the subsequent scene they are shown being transported by foot / sled across OTHERWISE STUNNINGLY BEAUTIFUL IF SNOW-COVERED FORESTED COUNTRYSIDE somewhere in Siberia arriving at barracked, somewhat barbwire-fenced, camp with a Communist Era "Red and Gold" banner draped across the entrance declaring "Welcome Polish Deportees."  The story now begins ...

Where the heck are they?  Who knows.  Yes, it becomes clear in the film that they have an idea of the towns and cities that they passed and therefore pretty much the (in general) district that they find themselves in.  But basically they're in a barracked, somewhat barbwired camp SOMEWHERE some fairly long distance from some Siberian town (In the original book, apparently they found themselves somewhere near Lake Baikal and therefore somewhere in the region of Irkutsk).

Interestingly, "security" wasn't portrayed as particularly harsh.  It didn't have to be ... where the heck would one run to if one tried to run away?

The basic rule was set-down quickly by the camp's NKVD Commandant named Savin (played by Andrey Zhurba  [IMDb] [FW.pl]*): "To eat, you must work."

Work doing what?  Chopping trees.  (The Polish deportees found themselves in the middle of the Siberian Taiga, forest that went on for hundreds, indeed thousands, of miles in pretty much every direction)  How many trees?  Basically "a lot."  The quota appeared to be unclear and certainly arbitrary. 

What seemed clear was that everyone needed to be seen working hard chopping and sawing wood, even those who NORMALLY wouldn't be doing so: women (sometimes even pregnant women) and children.  AND there was no particular concern on the part of the Commandant / NKVD if anyone fell sick or for that matter even tried to run away.

In the film, Staś' mom Antonnia (played by Urszula Grabowska [IMDb] [FW.pl]*) falls ill with typhus as the first winter turns into spring.  The camp's doctor flatly tells the family "there's no medicine" and has her simply "rest" (for weeks... until she "gets better," or ... dies) in the infirmary.    Staś' father, Jan (played by Adam Woronowicz [IMDb] [FW.pl]*) then tries to leave the camp in search of medicine.  Where?  How?  Interestingly, the camp's Commandant doesn't particularly care that Jan goes missing, apparently for several days.  Again, there was really NO PLACE TO RUN (AWAY) TO.  And if Jan somehow came back with medicine, THAT DIDN'T MATTER TO HIM EITHER.  BECAUSE WHETHER JAN OR ANTONNIA (or their kids, or ANY OF THE OTHER DEPORTEES AT THE CAMP) LIVED OR DIED DIDN'T MATTER ... there'd be plenty of other Poles from Soviet Occupied Eastern Poland that could be deported TO REPLACE THEM.  And if, conceivably, the Soviet Union "ran out of Poles" well, there'd be deportable Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Chechens, Tatars (the list goes on ...) all soon existing in similar camps to replace them as well.  (Previous to WW II, those camps were filled with deported Kulaks (rich Russian peasants) and Ukrainians ... until the Soviet Union largely ran out of deportable Kulaks and Ukrainians).

All that seemed to matter to the Commandant/NKVD was that NOTHING beyond "making the quota" occurred in the camp.  So, eventually Cynia and her father (interestingly, it becomes clear as the film progresses that they are Jewish, while Staś' family was Catholic) get removed from the Camp to, presumably a more punitive camp elsewhere.  Why?  Because they were caught teaching the kids in the camp a little about Polish history.  

So how long was this to go on -- with life reduced to simply "Making the Quota," "Not Getting Sick" and "Not being caught thinking/talking about anything (substantial) else?"  NO ONE KNEW (not even the Commandant).  Quite possibly FOREVER.   And in that, of course, was the horror.  

To the film's credit, the film isn't solely about "suffering Poles" vs "Evil (Soviet) Russians.  Most most of the Russians portrayed were portrayed as sincere Russian patriots / sincere believers in Stalinist Communism.  Indigenous (non/pre-Russian settlement) people formed part of the story (one saves Staś' father Jan's life) as do others in Siberia as a result of previous waves of deportations.  In particular, the Camp doctor's daughter, a nurse named Lyubka (played by Valeria Gouliaeva [IMDb] [FW.pl]*) is portrayed as really a kind soul.  She makes sure that Staś' mom Antonnia gets treated well (at least given her rest) and she tells the Dolina family that she (and presumably her father) had been deported from Leningrad to Siberia some (fair number of) years before.  Does she miss Leningrad?  She tells the Dolina's that she hardly remembers it any more.  There's also a Ukrainian guard who falls in love and against the Commandant's wishes marries one of the Polish inmate/deportees Irena (played by Sonia Bohosiewicz [IMDb] [FW.pl]*).  Interestingly, he's allowed to marry her even if the Commandant was against it... yup, it was a very strange and seemingly arbitrary system. 

So how long did this go on?  Well, until Hitler invaded the Soviet Union.  Then Stalin, certainly Evil but ever a pragmatist, found better uses for Poles (besides having them just chop wood until they eventually died at random camps in Siberia): He needed them as soldiers.  And the Poles were certainly willing to fight against Germans FOR POLAND.  So the camp was soon closed and everybody (inmates, guards, hospital/supporting staff) was allowed to go to whatever city they were near (again in the book it would be Irkutsk) and the men were allowed to go off to war.

AS THE END OF THE WAR APPROACHED, the Polish deportees were GIVEN THE OPTION (though HIGHLY DISCOURAGED FROM DOING SO) to return to what would be "west-shifted" post-WWII Poland.  The Dolinas seek to exercise their option to return home.  Much still ensues, and ... (SPOILER ALERT... though I've already written about most of the film already...) THEY MAKE IT BACK.

During the discussion following the screening of the film, the director noted that of the Poles deported to Siberia in this way (according to the Kresy-Siberia Virtual Museum as many as 2,000,000), 1/3 died, another 1/3 remained in Siberia or otherwise never returned to Poland and 1/3 did return to Poland.

What a story!


* Foreign language webpages are most easily translated using Google's Chrome Browser.

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Papusza [2013]

MPAA (UR would be PG-13)  EyeForFilm.UK (3 1/2 Stars)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
FW.pl listing*
DziennikBalticki.pl (J. Zalesiński) review* 
Film.org.pl (G. Fortuna) review*
Newsweek.pl (M. Sadowska) review*
Onet.pl (D. Romanowska) review* 
RadioRAM.pl (I. Pelczar) review*
EyeForFilm.co.uk (R. Mowe) review
TheHollywoodReporter (S. Dalton) review

Papusza [2013] [IMDb] [FW.pl]* (written and directed by Joanna Kos-Krauze [IMDb] [FW.pl]* and  Krzysztof Krauze [IMDb] [FW.pl]*) is an all black-and-white, heavily stylized, Polish/Romani language (English subtitled) biopic that tells the story of Bronisława Wajs (Papusza) [1908--1987], the first Polska Roma (Polish Gypsy) poet to ever be published.  The film played recently at the 25th Polish Film Festival in America held in Chicago between Nov 8-24, 2013.

The film is intentionally "dreamy" / non-linear in its narrative style as it tells the story Papusza, her name meant "doll" (played by Paloma Mirga [FW.pl]* when Papusza was young, and by Jowita Budnik [IMDb] [FW.pl]* in adulthood), as she was born, after all, into an itinerant clan of Polska Roma gypsies.

The Romani people (who prefer to be called by that name rather than "gypsies") came to Europe from India in the 14th century and had famously never settled down, in part by choice and in part as a result of resentments/prejudices of local already settled populations.  The result has been a centuries long history of living at the margins of European society -- of persecutions, attempts at forced assimilation (first beginning during the reign of Habsburg Empress Maria Theresa in the 1700s and continuing in most Communist held central/eastern Europe through to the end of the Cold War Era), extermination (under the Nazis), and sterillization (in Communist-era Czechoslovakia).  Papusza lived during the eras of Nazi occupation and post-WW II/Communist Era coerced assimilation and the film portrays both times as well as that of pre-WW II Poland.

A people surviving for a prolonged period of history simply by its wits can be expected to suffer the effects of such prolonged isolation -- tendencies toward greater than normal paranoia and an excessive reliance on superstition to give meaning/justification/purpose to the otherwise inexplicable (and perhaps to the otherwise inexplicably unjust).  And its clear in this film that Papusza suffered enormously as a result of this during her life. 

As a young Polska Roma woman growing-up in rural Poland of the 1920s, she was actively discouraged, above all, by the women from her own clan from learning to read and write, being told that such knowledge leads to witchcraft and that "nothing good can come from it."  Indeed, writing in general seemed to be frowned upon in her community.  All that a Roma needed to know could be learned / recalled by memory (either individually or collectively by the group).  Writing things down could only serve those "on the outside" to hurt Romas.

Papusza did learn to read/write against her community's wishes by (as per the film) striking a deal with a similarly skeptical and like the Romas, marginalized, Jewish woman (Jews, albeit far more established/sedentary, in rural pre-WWII Poland were also quite marginalized) -- chickens for lessons.

Her talent as a poet was discovered by a young Polish poet/intellectual named Jerzy Ficowski (played in the film by Antoni Pawlicki [IMDb] [FW.pl]*), who had lived in hiding with Papusza's clan during WW II.  Yet, after publication of some of her poems (and a book by Jerzy Ficowski about Poland's Roma peoples) Papusza was effectively disowned by her clan which apparently convinced itself that she betrayed their people's secrets:  "How can we continue to survive if now 'they' know 'everything' about us?"

For her part, poor Papusza apparently lived a good part of the rest of her life in a mental institution having suffered due to this heartache (her own adopted son who she had saved during the Roma Holocaust disowned her as a result of the publication of her poems) a break with reality.  Eventually, she convinced herself that she "never wrote anything."

And it's of course a terrible shame because Papusza will certainly be remembered as a Romani patriot and one who arguably helped save her people by helping those on the outside to understand it better.

All in all a lovely if very, very sad story portrayed in a beautiful, dreamlike way.


* Foreign language webpages are most easily translated using Google's Chrome Browser.

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Floating Skyscrapers (orig. Płynące Wieżowce) [2013]

MPAA (UR would be R)   Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing
FilmWeb.pl listing*
Stopklatka.pl (U. Lipińska) review*
WP.pl (K. Kasperska) review*

Floating Skyscrapers (orig. Płynące Wieżowce) [2013] [IMDb] [FW.pl]* (written and directed by Tomasz Wasilewski [IMDb] [FW.pl]*) is one of two (for this Chicagoan's eyes) surprising and potentially controversial Polish films to play recently at the recent 49th Chicago International Film Festival and then at the 25th Polish Film Festival in America held in Chicago (the other being In the Name of ... (orig. W Imię...) [2013] which took-on the topic of Catholic priestly sexual abuse).

The current film is about Kuba (played by Mateusz Banasiuk [IMDb] [FW.pl]*) a young, late-teen, more likely, early 20-something swimmer still living with his mother, Ewa (played by Katarzyna Herman [IMDb] [FW.pl]*) but recently having brought in his girlfriend named Sylwia (played by Marta Nieradkiewicz [IMDb] [FW.pl]*) to live with them.  Ewa's not happy with Kuba having done this.  On the other hand, Sylwia is working (as a waitress at a somewhat upscale hotel) while Kuba is not.  Still, Kuba is training as a swimmer and at least at some earlier point there had been some real hope that he could be a serious contender (presumably for the Olympic team).   However by the time the story begins, it's more or less clear to the observant viewer that this possibility has clearly passed.  Mom may not know (or even have clue yet) but Kuba's clearly drifting. 

Indeed, it soon becomes apparent that the main reason Kuba still goes through the motions of going to the pool "to train" is ... to be around similarly "buff" men.

Things come to a head when Kuba and Sylwia go to a party at some art gallery.  Readers remember that Sylwia's working at a rather upscale hotel and presumably she has some connections / aspirations of meeting and being with "interesting people."  Yet ironically the one who "scores" is Kuba, who runs into an architect's son named Michał (played by Bartosz Gelner [IMDb] [FW.pl]*) and the two soon _fall in love_ -- Kuba the strong hunky jock and Michał the artistic sensitive one.   Oh dear ...

Now this is Poland of course, and the difficulty that both Kuba and Michał have with their parents (though Michał appears to have been much further along explaining things to his folks regarding his homosexuality) is compounded by realities of contemporary Polish domestic life.  Both Kuba and Michał appear to live at home, Michał appears to be "more employed" (presumably as some sort of a graphics artist...) than Kuba, who is not employed at all.  And then there's still Sylwia, who still (for the moment anyway) loves Kuba and from a practical point of view IS STILL LIVING WITH KUBA AND KUBA'S MOTHER IN HIS MOTHER'S NOT PARTICULARLY LARGE FLAT.  Now, mom never particularly liked Sylwia , but after all this starts to play-out, she does come to respect her (for Sylwia's job) and to kinda feel sorry for her (as it's not clear if Sylwia had a place to go if Kuba threw her out).

Obviously much has to play-out.  Now the above description of the movie MAY sound almost comic, but this is a Polish movie ... it's deathly serious: Even if you figure-out who you are / come-out as gay, even if you can get your parents to, with pain, come-around to accept this, WHERE DO YOU GO AFTERWARDS?

A very interesting story.


* Foreign language webpages are most easily translated using Google's Chrome Browser.

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In the name of ... (orig. W imię...) [2013]

MPAA (UR would be R)  Slant (2 Stars)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
FilmWeb.pl listing*
DlaStudenta.pl listing*
GazetaWraclawska.pl (M. Wróbel) review*
Gildia.pl (M. Michałek) review*
GlosWielkopolski (J. Sobczyński) review*
Kultura.Newsweek.pl (Ł. Rogojsz) review*
Polonia Christiana (K.Kratiuk) review*
Slant (B. Weber) review
Variety (A. Simon) review

In the name of ... (orig. W imię...) [2013] [IMDb] [FW.pl]* (directed and cowritten by Małgorzata Szumowska [IMDb] [FW.pl]* along with Michał Englert [IMDb] [FW.pl]*) is a current Polish film that takes up the priestly sex abuse scandal that has been reverberating throughout the Catholic Church across the world.  The film played recently at both the 49th Chicago International Film Festival and at the 25th Annual Polish Film Festival in America held in here Chicago.  While predictably dismissed in some trés liberal quarters in the American press (see A. Simon's review from Variety above) where it's taken as a tenet of faith that Slavic lands _must_ be "backward," the film has produced lively discussion in Poland that reminds "those with eyes and ears" (or at least access to google's chrome browser or translate.google.com :-) that, as in Ireland (that other Catholic country also so dogmatically looked down upon by America's eternally WASP-dominated establishment), Poland's artistic community is neither "backward" nor a "lapdog" (For those wondering how Ireland's artistic community has confronted similar questions about homosexuality, etc please refer to my review of Albert Nobbs [2011] of a few years past).

In any case, I've much appreciated the efforts of the organizers of the annual Polish Film Festival in America over the years because they remind readers and viewers that Poland is not the racist backwater that it's often portrayed.  It is a complex country with a centuries long literary / artistic tradition that continues despite Gulags and Concentration camps (most of Poland's intelligencia was shot or otherwise exterminated by both the Nazis and the Soviets during World War II, neither of which wanted a Poland after the war capable of standing on its own feet) and since the fall of Communism in 1989 has been allowed to live in peace again and begin once again to flourish and thrive.

Again, as in Ireland, there will always be a tension between the Catholic Church and its artistic community.  Yet, it does a terrible disservice to both if one insists on the view that the Catholic Church dominates everything.  The Church will comment on the Arts, as the Arts will comment, and as in this film it comments, on the Church, BUT IN A FREE SOCIETY THAT SHOULD BE NORMAL.  With freedom of speech/expression comes accountability ... and that is good for all.

To the film ... It centers on a Catholic priest named Adam (played by Andrzej Chyra [IMDb] [FW.pl]*).  By dress (he wears designer-tagged clothes) and mannerisms (he jogs and he skypes) clearly born-and-raised in the city, he finds himself having been recently moved from a ministry in Warsaw to a provincial town somewhere in the Polish countryside where he takes-up a post as the parish priest as well as co-director of a half-way house/reformatory for juvenile delinquents (male) from the city. 

Initially, all appears well.  He seems well liked by the townspeople, respected by Michał Raczewski (played by Łukasz Simlat [IMDb] [FW.pl]*) the other, lay (former-seminarian but left to get married) co-director the half-way house/reformatory, and in as much as it would be possible, gaining respect of the young male youths (juvenile delinquents) serving out the rest of their terms there.

But it's a house of cards.  And how the film-makers have it fall apart is, for me, a Catholic priest after all, fascinating:

To begin with, Michał's wife Ewa (played by Maja Ostaszewska [IMDb] [FW.pl]*) who, like Adam, also grew-up in the city, and has hated it, living out in the country, ever since she and Michał had moved out there after getting married, finds Adam "interesting."  When he comes to refuse her overtures, SHE becomes the first to ask the question if (on screen) only to him: "Why were you moved from Warsaw to a s-hole like this?  It must have been some sort of a punishment."

Then Adam comes to have to deal with (surprise among still de-facto inmates in the prime of their lives) a couple of incidents of homosexuality among the youth in his charge.  And he deals with these matters quite compassionately actually.  However, one of the juveniles, starts to vocalize what others (in as much as they thought about it much) were piecing together ... that Adam is probably gay.  Hearing this from the arrogant, frightening "Blondyn's" (played by Tomasz Schuchardt [IMDb] [FW.pl]*) mouth, one of the more sensitive youths there, named "Dynia" (played by Mateusz Kościukiewicz [IMDb] [FW.pl]*), one who Adam's been actually "helping quite a bit" / becoming "close to" ... is ELATED.

Then one of the other teens at the half-way house/reformatory COMMITS SUICIDE (for any number of reasons), inviting, however, indeed necessitating,  investigation.  Boże mój (Good God...) how could someone with already a question mark in his past, possibly survive?

When poor Michał riding back to town in his truck finds Adam and "Dynia" alone in Adam's car with Adam's head apparently on "Dynia's lap ... WHAT THE HECK IS HE SUPPOSED TO DO?  He goes to the Bishop, who's, of course, not particularly happy to see him especially when he comes with the news that the Bishop _already fears_ Michał is coming with. 

The rest of the film plays-out from there ... and yes, not particularly well... indeed, by standards of today TERRIBLY (and when one gets to the film's last scene, TERRIBLY IN SO MANY WAYS ...).  BUT I suppose what's also fascinating is that ... as one gets to the end of the film, as horrific as the ending is (and it's INTENTIONALLY HORRIFIC)... the viewer with any kind of compassion would probably understand, at least PARTLY, WHY.

And that I suppose would be the novelty of the film.  It's a brave, confusing and above all CAR WRECK of a film:  In the name of...?  In the name of ... who?


* Foreign language webpages are most easily translated using Google's Chrome Browser.

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Captain Phillips [2013]

MPAA (PG-13)  CNS/USCCB (A-III)  ChicagoTribune (3 Stars)  RE.com (3 stars)  AVClub (B)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J.P. McCarthy) review
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RogerEbert.com (S. Wloszczyna) review
AVClub (A.A. Dowd) review

Captain Phillips [2013] (directed by Paul Greengrass, screenplay by Billy Ray, based on the book A Captain's Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALS, and Dangerous Days at Sea by Richard Phillips and Stephen Talty) tells the true story of the hijacking of the U.S. flagged merchant vessel Maersk Alabama by Somali pirates off the coast of Somalia in April 2009 largely through the perspective of Richard Phillips (played magnificently in the film by Tom Hanks) the ship's captain and Somali hijackers' principal captive, who (mild SPOILER ALERT) was ultimately freed by U.S. Navy Seals in a shoot-out aboard/about a life-boat from the Maersk Alabama on which the highjackers sought to flee along with Phillips as their captive. 

The rather spectacular shootout (again AT SEA aboard/about A LIFE BOAT) that left all the hijackers dead/captured and Phillips and all the US Navy personnel uninjured was widely reported in the Press at the time though it honestly took its recreation in the film for one to appreciate how it all took place.  Honestly, this could have been the most spectacular shootout in American history since those that took place at The Alamo, the OK Corral or during the final police ambush seeking to apprehend Bonnie and Clyde.  As such, as violent as the story ultimately was, it probably deserved telling.

To their credit, the film-makers, did try, in as much as possible to humanize the Somali pirates using Somali-American immigrants as actors (Barkhad Abdi, Barkhad Abdirahman, Faysal Ahmed, Mahat M. Ali) speaking Somali (subtitled into English) during the film, the dialogue in the film noting the obvious that in desperately poor, often enough famine stricken Somalia legitimate job prospects are "rather slim" (One would think, however, that in a famine stricken country, "fishermen" no matter how poor their catch would be would do "quite well" ... Still in a desperately poor country, organized crime bosses could easily be imagined as coming in to sequester the fishermen's boats for "a different kind of fishing ..." as apparently is exactly what's happened in Somalia). 

This is to say that the film-makers did try quite hard NOT to make this film into "a remake" of the horrendous and shockingly-propagandistic film Zulu [1964] where the Zulus who were defending THEIR LAND against British colonial encroachment were portrayed as simply crazed, utterly incomprehensible savages that set-upon an eminently "civilized" (and still red-coated) British army armed already with "hoard leveling"/"civilized order producing" Gattling guns.   [Note that my religious order, the Servants of Mary, and indeed my province, the USA Province of the Servite Friars, has been responsible for the Catholic Church's mission in Kwazulu (Zululand) since its inception following WW II]. Still one would hope that the Somali-American actors who were hired for this film will be able to find more positive roles to play in future Hollywood productions ...

An interesting comparison could be made between this film and a recent Danish film, A Hijacking (orig. Kapringen) [2012], about a hijacking of a Danish-flagged ship owned by a Danish corporation by Somali pirates.  The film makers there chose not to make any of the Somali hijackers comprehensible except for their English speaking negotiator.  The Danes also didn't have recourse to any equivalent to the U.S. Navy Seals.  So the story of that hijacking took a decidedly different (though also quite/very interesting) trajectory -- one involving (necessarily) "high stakes" negotiations between the pirates and the Danish company owning the ship / responsible for its crew.  Still the U.S. is not Denmark and it would have been doubtful that the American firm owning the Maersk Alabama could have negotiated the same kind of deal as the Danes did in the other story.

All in all, Captain Phillips' story is one that deserves to have been told and was told quite well.  I just hope that the Somali-Americans playing the hijackers in the film are able to find more positive roles in the future.


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