Wesele

The Wedding Day/Wesele - quite an astonishing work from provocative Polish writer/director Wojciech Smarzowski - powerfully melding tender, raw roots & memories, seemingly forgotten, only to have them tear back into brutal awareness through repeated re-livings - re-experiencing a past in need of, even demanding acknowledgement. A movie that will long remain with me.

The problem with movies about Holocaust is that the truth cannot be shown directly, without making the film unbearable. Therefore, a stylized approach is invariably chosen, which by definition diminishes the real trauma. Either you traumatize the viewer, or you traumatize the truth. Most of the time, the movie turns into a bloody adventure film, and that gets the most likes. War is sexy! War is fun! That seems to be the motto. Only a handful of directors dare to make the misery truly palpable, and that is usually not very popular.

While Wojciech Smarzowski offered no escape from the atrocities in his earlier film Wolyn, in The Wedding Day, he occasionally lets you catch your breath in our modern time. This is not kindly meant to let us recover, but to show that the sparks that ignited the total horrors of the past, still smolder today. People are still foolish, decadent, and evil; they just have iPhones now.

Given the fact that Polish national consciousness struggles with its past, Wedding Day is undoubtedly a brave film. Additionally, it is a fundamentally important film because Smarzowski shows that human cruelty is not a result of religion, politics, or nationality but of human extremism. Any people or faith can fall prey to it, and the result has been the same for centuries.

The way the two complex stories are shaped and interwoven also proves that director Smarzowski is a highly skilled craftsman. The Wedding Day is one of the better anti-war films that should be broadcast at prime time during every commemoration in Europe.

This movie is a mix of (1) a nowadays polish wedding including its aftermath, and (2) events that took place during WW2. The latter occured during both the Russian occupation - of the east part of Poland - as well as the later Nazi occupation.

The movies tries to show the viewer amongst others how a pogrom took place, whereby over 500 jewish people became victim of the hate of the local population.

Also, an attempt is made to show parallels between what happens in todays society compared with some of the events that resulted in WW2. As such, it can even be seen as a warning to the viewer that one does not let hate - towards other groups of people - escalate in a way that it consumes everything.

I personally would have preferred if a complete split was made between the events going on today and the ones in the past. Blending the events that are over 80 years aparts, may be artistically a nice move, but results in a too chaotic storyline in my opinion. Splitting them would have greatly benefitted the movie as a whole. I think that if the movie would have taken place for the most part during WW2, it would have easily gotten an IMDb score of at least +1 higher. Especially if you see how much effort was put in making the WW2 sets. Re-editing the current material might even create a movie that is a big improvement on the current state.

In its current state, I give this movie a score of 6.2/10, resulting in a 6-star IMDb rating.

Having seen numerous films that touch upon the Holicaust, I found this film powerful and harrowing. The juxtaposition of wartime crimes with modern xenophobia and corruption was brilliant, heightened by the grandfathers' memories entering the wedding scenes. I sat chilled to the bone through the rounding up of the Jews and their subsequent murder by fire. The director is not only talented but very brave, given Poland's recent laws against "false" (i.e. Critical) history of the role of yhe Poles in the Holocaust (and in killing returning Jews after the war). Highly recommended - tough viewing, but a must-see nonetheless.