jaworska-e

I think this story has a potential, it is captivating and interesting, the life of Stanislaw Marusarz (IMDb is not allowing the proper letter, that is a crossed l, so I write this name with a mistake, with a regular "l") is a ready movie script. The movie is factually and historically correct. Pity it was made as a short TV movie and not a regular around 90 minutes cinema movie, with enough time to deepen the story and widen some threads. The actors were chosen ideally, with a big precision, ressembling a lot the original people and, to make it realistic, main actors speak Podhale dialect between them. Child actors played really well, too.

Raya is one of the last survivors of the siege of Leningrad. We snoop into her life with the camera of Fima, young director, who speaks only a bit and lets Raya shine. From distrust to friendship, honoured by smoking a joint together in the last scene, Fima and Raya show us Raya´s world. We pass through several moments of Raya´s actual life, her memories and dreams. She stands firm in the name of the last war survivors, protect them from disrespect in the hospital, makes them being not forgotten by remembering about the birthdays of the oldest members of the community. Raya has some serious health issues, discussions with her daughter, but she takes everything with dignity and wit. This movie shows us a beauty of living, with all the possible life´s ups and downs.

As I saw it passing on TV I naively thought, oh, German movie about Mazury, love, marriage, cultural differences, difficult neighborhoods, so... it must be some kind of central-European "My big fat Greek wedding", I am gonna give it a chance! But the movie was boring, bland, stereotypical. The German actress playing a Polish woman pronounces Polish so poorly. And when she speaks German, she doesn´t sound as a Polish woman speaking German, with her accent and so on. Her way of being, clothing, behaving... things she say... it is all so German... and totally not Polish. Polish women act so differently... Polish weddings are not like this... scenario, music, behaviours... And I think the story could have a potential, could be done way much better, but it is just a tv movie for German Hausfrauen. (The probably only good scene was when the German, while having a meal with the Polish family, told an anti-Polish joke, a stupid one, and he is the only one laughing, and laughing really hard... one of the worst scenes was that dance at the wedding... and them finishing the wedding night in bed... and that conversation they had in bed... so unrealistic)

I am not much of review writing; I didn´t even want to watch this movie but it happened..., but I needed to say it here. Lack of reasonable, "normal" motivations, literality, materialism, poor logics - I don´t even really care as much as something else that disturbs me so heavily in this movie: the scurrility of Laura in her vocabulary, her manners, way of speaking, behaviors. Polish girls are not so vulgar, unrefined and boorish. When Olga and Laura meet in Warsaw, talk and behave in such a churlish way that it makes me ashamed of being Polish myself while I watch this...