Entertainment?

In Darkness,

directed by Agnieszka Holland,

cinematography by Jolanta Dylewska

An important Jewish history professional says (perhaps as a provocation) that he won’t see “In Darkness” because the Holocaust and entertainment should not mix. I disagree (although the dilemma how to present the horror of the past needs to be discussed).

I watched “In Darkness” in a Warsaw crowded theater. The last scene of the film triggered there a wave of nervous, sprinkled with relief, laughter.

In good films often the camera assumes the dominating emotion in a scene. “In Darkness” takes it further and has the light telling the main emotion in a scene. This notion is masterfully carried through the entire narrative and explodes in the final, breathtaking scene, leaving the audience spellbound.

The reaction of the audience proves how needed are the attempts to understand the horrors of the past. Even when enveloped in a classical formula and therefore clearly belonging to the entertainment, such attempts work as catharsis, mirrors and powerful transformative tools.

Was the relieved and nervous laughter at the end of “In Darkness” caused by processing of (the collective) guilt? Clearly, the filmmakers took the audience by hands and made it follow the hero who, undergoing a transformation from racist to mentch, quite possibly validated in the viewers plenty of their own instincts - both good and bad. The bad most likely were often denied, the good were unattainable and outside of an individual contemporary experience. Yet both brewed and brew in the psyche of those even remotely touched by the Shoah.

Is the Hollywood formula a risky vehicle to talk about the Holocaust? Sure. We need to explore and seek additional ways to talk about it. Yet the value of the classical “entertainment” formula illuminating the most troubling aspects of our human experience is indisputable, particularly when the storytelling is so powerful.

My only beef with the film is the last line of the closing titles. It comes after the obligatory info about the subsequent events in the hero’s life. The last title jumps to a slightly sneering and moralistic comment which can devalue the just experienced intimacy of an individual human journey. In short, perhaps after a powerful story it’s better to restrain from philosophizing.

Best movies of the decade. 2

"The Dark House"
written by Lukasz Kosmicki and Wojciech Smarzowski
directed by Smarzowski

“A mysterious follow up” to my list of 10 “film energy clusters” is going to change:

Initially, I did want to pull off a nepotist maneuver and announce a new “film energy cluster” emerging from Poland calling it “The Integration.” The said integration would cover aesthetic as well as political. Such 2009 polish produced films as “The Reverse”(Andrzej Bart writer, Borys Lankosz director), “My Flesh My Blood” (writers: Grazyna Trela, Marcin Wrona, director Marcin Wrona) and (my absolute favorite ) “The Dark House”, mix the past with the now on political and personal levels. Each does it differently, each movingly and effectively. A superb “My Flesh My Blood” is the least political of them. Watch out for these titles on the festival circuit.

At the end I decided not to name the Polish films as the eleventh energy cluster of the decade for two reasons. These great films are actually announcing what’s potentially on the horizon since some are only now being released. More importantly, I can’t turn the blind eye on what has been going on in Russia for the last decade. I just love “The Day Watch” and appreciate “Euphoria”, “Return”, “The Island” or “Tulpan” just to name a few titles. However since “Tulpan” is a polish co-production and is shot by Jolanta Dylewska let’s just put the Russians and the Poles together. It will take some more finagling to come up with the encompassing category since the Poles mostly attack the political while the Russians probe the existential dimension. So for now let’s just call it “the new Slavic energy.”

The melted screen

“Po-lin, Silvers of Memory”, by Jolanta Dylewska

This documentary (Po-lin in Hebrew - “You will rest here”, “A place of safe refuge”, “Poland”) consists mostly of home movies taken during the 30s by American Jews visiting their home villages and towns in Poland. Something happened during its screening:

The melted screen

The screen has melted

the borders between the past and the now have disappeared

and the space have became one.

You wake up and for a while

do not know what’s more real:

the events in this very moment

or those that have been so real just seconds ago,

and are still lingering in your mind,

afterimages of the soul, hints of the real, keys to the mystery

disappearing with your every conscious blink,

every move, every breath.

Who are you?

the dreamer or the dreamed?

The remembered or the rememberer?

An image on the screen of your mind

or your mind that watches it?

Do you live now

or perhaps in a shtetl

somewhere in Poland of 1932

and have been catapulted into the future

by a wise rabbi

or some strange person with

an even stranger machine

(cinematograph it is called)

to skip the horrors,

to see that the healing

can be achieved after all,

that dead and living

can coexist in the present?

United and peaceful.

Afterwards you

(returned to the now or just visiting from the past)

find yourself sitting still,

enveloped in wonder.

Rested and safe?

In Po-lin?