Marek Walczewski Movies

This Polish slice-of-life film, set in pre-WW II, offers a glimpse of life in a small resort where two social classes converge. On one hand there is the elite class of bourgeoisie tourists who come there to paint, write, and reflect upon their deserved fortune. On the other, there are the peasants who are at the mercy of the tourists. In one scene a tourist woman marches into a peasant home and begins talking art off the walls. In another, an aspiring artiste demands a peasant child pose barefoot in polluted water. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Reviewers found that the otherwise intriguing story and appealing performances in this film were burdened with an editorial technique they labelled "anti-structural," and "anarchic." Stefek is a small-time hood on the run from the really serious mobsters in the car chase which opens the movie. He briefly finds asylum in, of all places, a mental hospital, where he has himself admitted as a kleptomaniac. When this ruse fails to throw his pursuers off the scent for long, he and his sidekick get jobs at an opera company. As the doorman, he is in an ideal spot to notice and avoid pursuit. One he's been on the job for a while, he discovers that the high-toned art palace he works in does double-duty as an equally high-toned brothel. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

In a murky, sometimes confusing tale about a future dystopia in which people are waiting -- and waiting -- for a rescue ship called the Ark, there are several good one-liners, but they are outnumbered by the puzzling riddles and symbolism that permeate the story. The flotsam and jetsam of humanity are huddled together in an underground labyrinth after civilization as we know it has been obliterated by the Bomb. The survivors are protected by a dome which a repairman notes is bound to crack before the Ark arrives because it was constructed under a one-year plan. The hero of the film searches for the origins of the myth about the Ark and along the way falls in love with a prostitute. It seems the world's oldest profession has also survived the nuclear holocaust. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

A Polish "ship of fools" makes its way from Canada to Poland in this tale of an odd mix of passengers and their hidden agendas. One of the more tension-filled relationships is between a doctor with heart problems and an old acquaintance he meets on board. It is clear that this meeting causes more angst than even a normal heart should bear, yet the doctor and his former friend keep their bone of contention well buried. Other passengers in deep psychological water include the doctor's companion masquerading as his wife, and a singer on a downhill slide. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

In Volker Schlöndorff's award-winning adaptation of Nobel Prize winner Günter Grass' allegorical novel, David Bennent plays Oskar, the young son of a German rural family, circa 1925. On his third birthday, Oskar receives a shiny new tin drum. At this point, rather than mature into one of the miserable specimens of grown-up humanity that he sees around him, he vows never to get any older or any bigger. Whenever the world around him becomes too much to bear, the boy begins to hammer on his drum; should anyone try to take the toy away from him, he emits an ear-piercing scream that literally shatters glass. As Germany goes to hell during the 1930s and '40s, the never-aging Oskar continues savagely beating his drum, serving as the angry conscience of a world gone mad. The intense and visceral Tin Drum was one of the most financially successful German films of the 1970s and won the 1979 Oscar for Best Foreign Film and the 1979 Golden Palm (which it shared with Apocalypse Now). In the late '90s, the film became the center of a censorship controversy when some U.S. videotapes were confiscated because of the film's supposed violation of a child pornography statute. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Adapted from Stanislaw Wyspianski's turn-of-the-century play, The Wedding, or Wesele embodies a poetic exploration of Polish society in a crucial period during the mid-19th century when Poland had disappeared as a nation and was split three ways. Drenched in specifically Polish symbolism, it is not an easy film to understand. Much of the dialogue is in verse, the actors are made up in an exaggerated fashion indicating their mythical status, and the scenes are filmed in a hallucinatory style. The tale - based on real events - concerns the wedding of an intellectual poet and a peasant girl from Bronowice. At an ever-stranger celebratory gathering, the bridegroom's friends dance, imbibe spirits, and mourn Poland's subdivision into Prussia, Austria and Russia. The groom, his artist friend and a belletrist are visited by spirits from Poland's past; later, a prophet charges the bridegroom with responsibility to "arm the peasants and prepare for a revolution," though his words are then unveiled as a ruse. Variety wrote of the film, "Average audiences will be hard-pressed to piece together all the different threads and illusions... it is beyond non-Polish comprehension... though... [it is] beautifully filmed and acted."
~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

A 12-year-old boy (Gregorz Zuchowicz) and his father embark on a fishing trip where the boy hopes to get to know his father better. When a young woman leaves her boyfriend after a quarrel, the father invites her along on the trip. The boy's hopes of a father-and-son retreat are shattered when it becomes obvious dad is after more than fish. The girl's boyfriend finally returns for the girl as the son watches the two men face off from his position above on a sand dune. Sadly, the boy goes off by himself to fish while his father is busy with other things in this drama of a boy's realization of the harsh realities of the adult world. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide