Why don't we have a Bruce Willis?

The success of Polish films on the foreign as well as the domestic scene is often interpreted as a sign of the resurrection of Polish film-making. Indeed, the film review of this year seems to have identified even the financial means of that resurrection, in order to help our film makers find their way to their audience once again, however slow and difficult the process is expected to be. Because in vain is a sea of the most expensively made American films, if the Polish audience will not recognise themselves in them. In this country, the same need is felt as in Poland, where the viewer indices of domestic films and the star-cult that encircles Bogus aw Linda often successfully competes with Jurassic Park or Titanic./font>

It is perhaps not entirely by accident that this April, the organisers of the 6th Polish Spring of Films have promised us a selection of the greatest Polish hits of the 90s. Similar events of the recent past have all endeavoured to represent a state-of -the-art quality, while later on, a thematic editing becoming trendy. This year's selection, however, targeted the general public only in the eyes of the most superfluous observer. If one was unable to interpret "success" in a sufficiently broad sense, he was sure to leave the film week disappointed.

In Poland, the box-office hit has been a living and functioning category of films since the political transition. A wide range of genres have been on offer, from the action film through the comedy and the melodrama. Yet out of the seven films screened at this year's Film Spring, only two fit the classical category of the box office hit.

Kroll, directed by Wladyslaw Pasikowski, was perhaps the first box-office hit in Poland that made an attempt to follow in the footsteps of its American model. This film set Boguslaw Linda off on the road towards becoming a real action film hero, and one has every reason to call him the Polish Bruce Willis by now.

The greatest Polish success of the 90s is also attributable to Pasikowski, and it was made right after Kroll. Hungarian television channels showed it under the title Dogs, sometimes Cops, where the latter is clearly the more suitable translation. The film is consequent in employing the clichés of the Hollywood action film, whereas conflicts are taken from current Polish political and social reality. These, however, are only touched upon by the director. The subject matter is the disbanding of the Polish confidential files department, which is coupled with the qualities of the action film, i.e. the elimination of the confidential files, the extensive relationships the department's employees maintained with the Mafia and with other intelligence-services and drug cartels. The rather violent scenes, however, are softened by an emotional line. The main character - a previous department employee who tries to stay relatively honest - is played, of course, by Boguslaw Linda. The enormous success of Cops in Poland was not only due to the fact that the film has so skilfully used the tricks and panels of the American film, but also to discussing previous taboos in a seemingly open and outspoken manner. Yet the harping on mysterious taboos only disclosed the complicated and unbelievable characteristics of a criminal story, and outspokenness found its climax in regular swearwords.

Kroll has a structure whose main element is a deadline. If the lieutenant proves unable to return the deserter to the army-post by the morning, he will be tried by a military court and years in prison await him. The man-hunt of the Polish action film, however, wishes to provide the audience with a social constant, thus the row of events is more psyho-analytic than dynamic. Yet the characters are unable to stand on the ground, are constantly manipulated by the screen-play and forced to do deeds that entirely contradict their natures. Counterpointing - the method that Pasikowski used to disclose the darker sides of his characters - only aggravates their weightlessness. The director's success is certainly not grounded in either his sense of the dramatic or his ability to guide his actors. There is no trace of a distancing irony. Scenes of violence are neither stylised nor exaggerated, all they do is show that this may also happen in today's Warsaw. The cliché of the brutal, yet in his heart sensitive and good cop - worn and toren so much in countless action films, - adds nothing to the theme. The actors themselves have no idea of what exactly they are doing playing the character they play - which is something we are also quite in the dark about.

Janusz Zaorski's Happy New York ( 1997) - being the only true box-office hit of the Film Spring - first sets out to demolish, then in an ironic way fulfils the American myth that is still so prevalent in the consciousness of Eastern-European societies. His distance to slogans like "the promised land" or the "country of limitless possibilities" does not end with presenting the Polish immigrants that hang aimlessly around the streets of New York. Instead of the conclusion expected, he gives a twist to the myth, and makes the toughest of his heroes, advanced to the ranks of drug-traffickers (who else would play him if not Boguslaw Linda) complete a successful transaction, and with the money borrowed from his associates come to great wealth, which also helps the others into more or less stable financial conditions. One of them, the drunkard professor of Marxism-Leninism, may finally travel home, while another finds his place in American society and even becomes an American citizen. The lady marries a well-to-do, albeit bed-ridden American man. Could it be that America is yet the "promised land"?

The characters are typified by the video-letters they send home and which are wittily fitted into the film's dramaturgical structure. The video-messages sent by the youngest emigrant, the drug-smuggler Linda's brother - who happens to be a full-time punk musician - are especially suited to bring the film closer to the taste of the younger generation. His messages mix his home-country's traditional music with a techno-like punk music, as well as with flashes of New York in the video-clip genre.

Here the director, who generally works with more conservative methods and dramaturgy - and whose best known film is probably Mother of Kings made in 1982 but screened as late as '87 - proves his professionalism by demonstrating that he managed to learn the film-making style of the younger generation as well as kept its values and lightness. In the hands of the experienced director, these elements melt smoothly into the film's fabric.

The opening piece of the film week was an adaptation of a stage performance to film. (It is difficult to understand why a one-hour television play, made by video-technology and shown only on a video-screen, was selected as the representative piece). Time of Betrayal, Wojciech Marczewski's television production projects the intellectual clash between Machiavelli and Savonarola onto the current day. Marczewski previously directed Shivers and Escape From the 'Liberty' Cinema. His new, post-modern historic parable is a contemplation of the political transition, which he makes us understand through didactically anachronistic references. His usage of the elements known from films by Jarman and Greenaway - however - remain inorganic.

Pozna '56 operates with fashionable visual effects. Portraying the outcome of a workers' strike, the film oscillates between the adult's and the child's angle. Both the year and the sequence of events are painfully familiar. It's a pity that the artistic photographing is overdone, the showy presence of the camera is a constant warning and sadly alienates the audience from the film. The idea that every one of the participants have been pulled into the uprising incidentally, that adult and childhood adventures become each others' tragedy would have deserved a better made film.

Robert Gliski's biographical film, That Which is Most Important, made in 1992, won the audiences' good graces by its breathtaking visual world, for all it lacking artistic qualities. The film portrays the sufferings of the famous avant-garde poet of the Polish nation, Aleksander Wat, as well as his family that was forcefully moved to Kasahstan. Wat's tragedy is rooted in the fact that he becomes a Communist at the wrong time and the wrong place, and later gets disillusioned with it under similarly disadvantageous circumstances.

The political cult film of the Film Spring was not made at the end of the 90s. The year of its creation was 1982, but due to a ban on its screening it eventually reached its viewers seven years later than that. Ryszard Bugajski's Interrogation was indeed a success, attracting mass audiences not only with its political message - being distributed at the time of its banning in samizdat form - but also with its excellent dramaturgy, outstanding structure of effect mechanisms and action-packed story. This bewildering topic is presented in a fresh, dynamic form, reminiscent of Hollywood's visual and dramaturgical solutions.

The first official screening was held in Warsaw, on 13th December, 1989. In 1981, the same day saw Wojcech Jaruzelski proclaim martial law, and mass arrests started the night before. Not surprisingly, the film later called for a number of further interpretations, and its myth was reinforced by Krystyna Janda, the main character of the film, - known from films like Man of Marble and Man of Iron by the director Andrzej Wajda - being awarded the Golden Palm for the best female actress.

The story takes place during the 50s in Poland. The state security agency unexpectedly arrests a young actress, who so far has taken life as a ever-ending party of entertainment. The film shows the row of interrogations, i.e. tortures, that she is subjected to, and through that the process that awakens her, gives her strength, pride, tolerance and perseverance. The story luckily takes off from the schematic consequences of the basic situation, as the director was able to counterpoint the tragic with tasteful humour. Another merit of the film is that the depiction of the characters is not limited to juxtaposing "the evil power" with "the poor unfortunate". This makes the love that evolves between the "bad" girl and her torturer, the evil state security agency officer an even more ingenious dramaturgical solution.

Today, it is not so much the tragic historical memento of interrogations - that different characters can be subjected to - which is the merit of this film. The continuous status-game, in which the main character, possessing great inner freedom, manages to stay free even against those who keep her a prisoner, and calls regard to the weaknesses of their freedom, is a truly exhilarating feature of this film.

Another kind of freedom is portrayed by Jan Jakub Kolski's fairy-tale world. Although the folklorist-realistic fairy tale of Sword from the Captain is somewhat pushed in the direction of the romantic comedy, it is too much marked by the eccentric style of this individualistic director, which prevents the film from being a typical success.

Two solemn promises squeeze the life of the 90 year old Jakubek. His oath of love calls him to the Peasant Heaven, thus he prepares for death. His military oath, however, obliges him to leave his sword to no-one else but his grandson. And as he has no grandson yet, his forever young lover is waiting for him in vain - the armed old man is turned back from the gates of Heaven. Those who already saw a film by Kolski will find this folklorist fairy-tale, enriched with magical elements and yet handled in a materialistic way - familiar. The director approaches the common day quality of wonders and the intimacy of the common day with a natural cheerfulness, while, paradoxically, anti-clerical and blasphemous undertones can also be heard in his film. Although thematically, Kolski may be easily likened to South-American prose as well as the films of Martin Sulik (In the Garden ), paranormal elements receive much larger dramaturgical emphasis in his films. He profanises the transcendent world by equipping his heroes with gestures of creation, while angels are moved on a wire-way, i.e. metaphysical beings are depicted sunk into the hardships of physical existence. If one can accuse Kolski's world with blasphemy, one may only do it because this double depiction tendency deprives the transcendent attitude of its seriousness. His heroes of the visible world are not endowed with their magic omnipotence from above - they simply possess it. Their magic qualities and creative souls - independent as these are of God - are the self-portraits of the film-maker. Let us remember that every one of Kolski's heroes bears the director's name. They are either Janosz or Jakob.

The 1998 Polish Film Spring promised a selection of the Polish box-office hits of the 90s. If that's what happened, films that are destined to be successful in Poland make a paradoxical impression. As if people in Eastern-Europe would still be unable to enjoy unclouded entertainment; these films have all portrayed suffering human beings. This selection, however, may have painted an all too dark portrait of the state of Polish box-office hits.