A Film a Week - Knives Out

Previously published on Cineuropa

Knives Out is as independent as Polish cinema gets. It was financed privately, filmed on a single set of locations (a house with a yard and a nearby forest) over several days on a shoestring budget, and with a cast consisting of seven acting students. The film was ignored by the state funds and is even being distributed independently in its own country. The screenings are usually followed by an emotional debate with experienced director Przemyslaw Wojcieszek (known for films such as How to Disappear Completely, Secret and Made in Poland. After its international premiere at the Crossing Europe Film Festival in Linz, some festival exposure could be expected, but the chances of regular international distribution are slim.

The film’s strongest point is also its main problem: the political aspect. Wojcieszek’s standpoint is that the parliamentary and presidential elections held in 2015, and won by a large margin by the populist right-wing Law and Justice party (PiS), were a shock of epic proportions that would not only transform Poland as we know it, but would also have repercussions on the state of things across the entire EU. Wojcieszek claims – and the statistics support him – that in the elections, the votes of the younger demographic groups, both urban and rural, were critical, and they either went right or abstained. The context is too delicate for the current Polish government, sensitive to all forms of criticism, but too local for the wider, European picture, too.

Knives Out is an honest effort to face the new reality and examine the state of Polish society, especially its younger generations, and try to figure out what went wrong. The characters are twenty-somethings from an unnamed town who have not seen one another since high-school graduation but who meet up at a party. There are three couples, two heterosexual (one of which is conservative and lives in relative poverty; the other one is hosting the party, and is liberal and well-off) and a lesbian, leftist one, consisting of a young, sought-after app developer and her partner, an activist. The mere presence of the host’s Ukrainian co-worker, Solomiya, is a catalyst for unpleasant events. As the amount of wine and vodka drunk by the people around the table steadily rises, the boasting about the best generation switches to statements about love, then to the best country and nation in the world, and finally rude jokes turn into ethnic slurs. Solomiya could not be more in danger even if she had a target drawn on her back.

The film is structured like a play in two acts, which is to be expected coming from a writer-director with considerable theatre experience. The atmosphere is marked with a somewhat rough style similar to American indie cinema of the 1990s, with black-and-white photography in the 4:3 ratio, filmed with a hand-held camera and featuring abrupt cuts in editing. Therefore, there is no stale sense of filmed theatre, and the proceedings are kept kinetic and lively. However, bearing in mind the economy of the script, Wojcieszek sometimes goes too far in skipping the steps that outline the shifting of the characters’ motivations, which makes some turns of events fairly unlikely. But overall, as a film, as well as a sociological and political exposé, Knives Out stands very solidly.

A Film a Week - Spoor / Pokot

After several years working on different television series, Agnieszka Holland returned to filmmaking with modern day rural thriller set on Polish-Czech border with ecological and political undertones Spoor which premiered in this year’s Berlinale competition and won Alfred Bauer Prize. This is her first film since Oscar-nominated In Darkness (2011). It is to early to speak about awards ambitions, but, in Polish and Central-Eastern European context of “non-liberal democracy”, Spoor will be talked about in months to follow.

The film is based on Olga Tokarczuk’s novel Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead (2009), adapted for the screen by novelist and the director themselves. The plot is centered around Mrs. Duszejko (Agnieszka Mandat-Grabka in a great turn), a retired civil engineer who moved to a small village in mountain region, took a part-time job teaching English in local elementary school and developed interest in astrology and eco-activism. The latter can be especially tricky in the region with strong hunting traditions, where literally everyone is connected through hunting societies and where the grade school age children are thought hunting anthems.

First her dogs disappear, which can be a natural hazard of life in the wilderness, or more likely provocation of sorts. Shortly after that, dead bodies of hunters start popping up, from a low-life poacher to local magnate, police chief and even mayor and all of them had their disagreements with the “crazy” old lady. Mrs. Duszejko has a theory that, since all the crime scenes are covered in different animal tracks, it is some sort of natural cycle and payback for all the hunting and poaching. Or maybe we have the case of a good ol’ fashioned serial killer here...

Luckily, she is not all alone there. Her neighbour Matoga (Wiktor Zborowski) makes some moves towards her, but more than that, they enjoy the company of one another. Mrs. Duszejko’s kindness towards a troubled young woman called “Good News” (Patrycja Volny) will result in friendship with her and another outsider, an epileptic computer technician Dyzio (Jakub Grieszal) working for the police. And her “party” is rounded with a travelling Czech university professor interested in insects named Boros (Miroslav Krobot).

The sense of community, no matter how marginal and alternative it is can be crucial for mental sanity in the conservative, patriarchal, even primitive and primal environment. It is not just about ecology and making the case against hunting (even though the film’s internal calendar is informing the viewers about the hunting seasons). It is about Polish society in general: the strong influence of the Catholic Church and interwined conservative structures that are posing for absolute majority even if they are not. The anti-eco argument was pulled out for the last parliamentary elections, the old left-leaning government was accused of taking care only after “eco-fanatics, bicycle-riders and vegans in big cities”, and not giving a damn about “regular”, conservative, god-fearing “majority” of Polish people. That kind of narrative worked: Polish society is divided in two sides pitted against one another, with virtually no dialog in between them and little hope that the things will change in near future. Having that in mind, Spoor is a film that perfectly nails the current moment of time, no matter the fact that the source novel was written years ago, when the overall situation was not that bleak.

I would like to say that Spoor is as good piece of cinema as it is an important, uncompromising social statement. Unfortunately, it is not true, it is good, but not that good. The production values are decent, on the course of similarly themed Nordic thrillers. The TV-roots of such films are evident on every step on the way, and Holland’s recent work leaves its mark. She tries and somewhat succeeds to tweak it up with some marvelous shots of nature changing with the seasons and humorous intervention with the hunting calendar. The actors’ performances are also commendable, with the stage and film veteran Agnieszka Mandat-Grabka leading the way with the “juiciest” role of the film’s heroine and others following her cue and taking their moments to shine.

The main problem with Spoor is not the fact that it relies to heavily on context, but its logic and mechanics taken from literature that works so well on paper does not cut the deal for the film. Right from the start, it is obvious that Spoor is a direct screen adaptation just by its rhythm. The feeling is cemented with the ending which is perfect for a crime novel, but is over-explanatory and too verbal for the art and craft of filmmaking. That should not come as a surprise since the writer was involved in adaptation of her own work, and the good thing is that Spoor works for the most of the time, but it still could and should be a better piece of cinema.