Kler

Three Catholic priests on intertwining paths, covering the whole known spectrum from sexual abuse to lighthearted nonsense. Bribing money in supermarket shopping bags. Funny and heart wrenching. A gem of new Polish cinema.

As a Pole I can say that what you will see is quite possible to happen every day in Poland. However, if you will watch this movie carefully you will see that not all priests are bad, just like not every human being is bad. Most of Polish reviews criticize this movie for "witch hunting" of priests in Poland. I think those people saw a wrong movie because it clearly shows two sides of a coin. Watch open minded, I am sure you will see a value in it.

Wojciech Smarzowski is a very brave and decent filmmaker - it was him who made a very tragic but hugely excellent war film Wolyn in 2016, and now, in 2018, he made another very bold move, and shot an epic movie called Kler (Polish for The Clergy), touching upon a very delicate, fragile and controversial topic as crimes in Catholic Church. This is a topic equal to those of Holocaust or Hitler's crimes in the USSR. This is a topic which not every filmmaker will ever think about. Wojciech Smarzowski took a very heavy toll and yet he managed to produce a huge, often overwhelming, very heavy, deeply tragic, extremely sad movie which displays a very bleak, dark and almost unbearable picture of modern-day situation with sex crimes in Church in Poland. Here we see three Polish Catholic priests - Jacek Braciak who plays Leszek Lisowski, Arkadiusz Jakubik who plays Andrzej Kukula and Robert Wieckiewicz who plays Tadeusz Trybus - we see them in various locations, different serious challenges and very dark moments of their lives. I am not to disclose details, this is a must-see movie, even though it is 2 hours long and is very unsettling at times, since the very topic is so unpleasant. I warn you, before watching - be prepared for a very tragic and oftentimes almost heartbreaking scenes, but the movie never lets you doubt that everything shown here is a sad truth.

What was the quality problem with most of the earlier Polish movies? The action-oriented screenplays used to give only a coarse look on characters' inside, so the actors delivered their lines very flat, not showing much connection to the character. That was the reason that Polish cinematography was second-rate in comparison to world's best.

Now, the movie Kler is a game changer. It turns out, we have in Poland great actors who are able to play a character very deeply. Three main characters become entangled in a set of intrigues which cause each of them to show a lot of their personality, including traumatic childhood memories. Moreover, I didn't expect the final outcome, so the plot plays on viewer's feelings triggering the viewer to make false assumptions about the characters as plot progresses, what makes this movie very enjoyable to watch. All of that makes this movie is so worthy to be watched - it is a masterpiece of drama. To me, the world's best movie of 2018.

Many people are asking - is the plot of Kler real? The Roman-Catholic Church in Poland claims that some 90% of Poles are catholic, based on the number of administered baptisms. However as statistics show, less than 40% of Poles regularly attend masses, and only about a half of those observe the Church's conservative teachings. On the other hand, polls show that 70% of Poles are tired of the Church's influence on Poland, being angry about both right- and left-wing politicians colluding with influential bishops for their own good but against the interest of an average Polish citizen. This movie is meant to appeal to those 70%, so it is more important that this is how the majority of the Polish nation see their country's largest church, rather than if the plot itself is real.

If movie can bring me both to tears and to laugh it is a great movie.

Also I judged character wrongly until the end - movie is also surprising.

Only drawback is too many swears- it could have been expressed similar level withouth them.