Day 3 – 28th PSIFF -2017
The third day starts the “Polish” part of my festival fare. I skipped “Ashes and Diamonds” since I have seen it about 20 times. But we start with England. “I, Daniel Blake” from
Veteran socialist filmmaker Ken Loach is back with his biggest success in years, a devastating indictment of welfare cutbacks, government bureaucracy, and neglect for human dignity. Winner: Palme d’Or (Best Film) Cannes; Audience Awards, Locarno, Vancouver. Took me back to my 12 years as a legal aid lawyer. In US, as apparently in Britain, all disability claims are denied the first time, so you have to appeal. welfare claims, in the meantime, while you’re waiting for the disability, are supposed to be processed within 30 days, but never are. Our protagonist played with wry humour, computer challenged, common sense kind of guy, gets the endless run around, while being of help to a mother and two children caught in the same merry-go-round. Citizen Blake doesn’t make it, he is unable to work because of a heart attack, but he is supposed to look for work to get assistance. Good movie, but the Palme d’Or maybe a bit overstated.
“Afterimage”, the last film from Andrzej Wajda, I have seen every one of his films, is strong and devastating as ever. It’s poignant and enraging account of how the brilliant Polish artist Władysław Strzemiński was forced to battle against post-World War II Communist orthodoxy. Contemporary of Chagall and Malevich, he studied with Malevich, and hailed from the same corner of Byelorussia as Chagall, founder of the school of Plastic and Fine arts in Lodz, Poland, he is loved by his students. He lost and arm and a leg in WWI and “afterimage” is his theory of painting in which imagining what you just saw with your eyes closed, typically landscapes, you cluster the shapes and the colors become more primary. Anyway, the new rulers of communist Poland want only social realism, he doesn’t. He loses his job in the school he founded, he loses his membership in the artist union without which he cannot work or get ration coupons, he is ultimately destroyed and dies in 1952. His school age daughter is a remarkable character and one wonders what happened to her – that phase in Poland ended in 1956, the year I left. Intellectually engrossing, emotionally hard hitting – still Wajda at his best.
“Memories of Summer” – it’s summer in a small provincial Polish town in the late 1970s. With his father away on business, it’s just 12-year-old Piotr and his beautiful blonde mother. When she is not at work they bicycle, swim, picnic and play cards together.
When Piotr is alone, he goes to the local lake in search of company. It’s there that he meets Skowron and his gang. The lake is also the spot where he brings the girl next door, who is much more mature than he. At the same time as Piotr starts to experience his first crush, his mother starts going out almost every night, claiming to be meeting a female friend. She’s more tense and less patient. As he observes his mother’s changing behavior, Piotr becomes increasingly isolated. While the movie is slow and minimalist in dialogue, the opening scene is powerful enough that you want to find out what happened, and we get back to it in the end, in which the boy sends a very strong message that he is not be ignored. I can only think that the reason this movie was made is autobiographical. “An intimate, beautifully shot piece, which is both nicely acted and assembled.” Fionnuala Halligan, Screen
