Pan Tadeusz

Andrzej Wajda has taken a masterpiece in one genre (poetry) and not only done justice to it but created a masterpiece in another genre (film), one which did not even exist when Mickiewicz wrote the poem 166 years earlier.

The actors are mainly well-known faces in Polish cinema and yet all rise above the stereotypical images many of the audience have of them. The greatest example of this is Boguslaw Linda as Robak the Priest. In the most moving scene in the film he gives the performance of his life.

The harmonious blend of Wajda's direction and Wojciech Kilar's score is a sensual feast. It is a film which impresses a profound sense of beauty to such an extent that one could appreciate the sheer art of the film without even having to understand the language (I cannot vouch for the quality of the sub-titles in English as I saw it in its original version).

If you only see one foreign language film this year, make sure it is this one.

Adam Mickiewicz is not only a Polish treasure. Thanks to Russian genial poet Alexander Pushkin, he became known in my homeland as well. What he wrote appealed to all the people. Such themes as home, Motherland, love, loyalty, bravery, war and peace are clear and true to all of us, be we Russian, Polish, American or Jewish. Andrzej Wajda has managed to fix this masterful poem, Pan Tadeusz, telling about the Napoleonic war times and the conflict between Polish who supported Buanaparte and Russians who fought him. Love story is another theme here and thus the Poet interwove all those in his intricate poem while the Movie Maker brought it all on to the screen. And it worked! When you hear those impeccable poetic lines spoken by the whole constellation of Polish actors - such as Boguslaw Linda, Marek Kondrat, Andrzej Seweryn - plus a great Russian film star Serhey Shakurov - you cannot but feel an immense pleasure. This is a very aesthetically beautiful movie, rich in costumes and in nature. Highly recommended for all who love poetry and excellently cut films.

I don't blame any non-Polish viewers for being confused or simply bored. Not at all. At the moment I'm even trying to imagine how it feels watching this picture without being able to refer anytime to the knowledge of the book and the cultural background. I guess it makes you feel lost and empty-headed.

First of all, the screen play was created in a very unusual way. The dialogs were not written, but extracted from the poem, some of them being full rhyming lines and some only parts. Of course most of the meaningful and informative pieces were in the narrative section of the poem and somehow didn't make it to the screen. I'm all for "show not tell", but "don't show, don't tell, everybody knows it all from school" is not the top shelf of movie-making to me.

All that is shown is pretty people, pretty costumes, pretty interiors, pretty nature. Definitely pleasant to see for anyone who likes pictures with historical settings and would like to get to know something about the life in a particular time and place.

The movie really works only for people who have read the poem and have been taught about its historical background. After such preparation they can enjoy this multimedia reconstruction of the characters and places from the book, because that's rather what it is to me. Indeed, all the actors are good, music memorable and all the details nicely done, but this production really lacks the cinematic backbone and something that would allow it to be a movie on its own.

In the modern times absorbed so much by computers, technology, materialism, it seems that such values like love, patriotism, sense of beauty and quest for the sublime belong to the days of yore, the days of fairies, poets and nobles. Yet, on such occasions like national holidays that usually serve to remind nations of their identities, human thoughts go towards our ancestors, those who created a nation, played a decisive role in what we are and who we are now. And in this very spirit, on November the 11th when my country celebrates the Independence Day, my friends and I have decided to see the significant movie by Andrzej Wajda. It is worth stating here that the film, the action of which takes place in 1811 and 1812, 16 years after Poland was entirely partitioned among Germany, Austria and Russia, is based on the key work of Polish literature --- 12 Books of Verse titled PAN TADEUSZ and written in Paris in the 1830s by the famous Pole Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855).

The goals of watching being purely patriotic, the movie appeared to us as convincing, more to say, interesting from the very beginning. However, the experience of the movie was not merely a patriotic awareness that would truly be applied to a limited number of viewers but something much more, something I would like to share with other people no matter what nationality, upbringing, culture they are - a treasure that seems lost in most modern movies yet found in the great effort to craft cinematic productions based on classical literature. Certainly, it is a serious effort to adapt 1800s' romantic verses to the expectations of modern movie buffs...

"O Lithuania, my country, thou Art

like good health; I never knew till now

How precious, till I lost thee."

(translation by Kenneth R. Mackenzie)

That is how PAN TADEUSZ by Adam Mickiewicz begins, that is how PAN TADEUSZ by Andrzej Wajda ends and what is in between?

A great story of courage, love, sensation, uprising, honor, politics (in the times of Napoleon - a great hope for the partitioned Poland), confession and ... reconciliation: something classical, universal, touching, humane, pure and upright. One could indeed enumerate such adjectives... How does it work in practice? On the one hand, we have a particular focus on national identity and duty while, on the other hand, the emphasis is drawn upon particular characters. To view comes young Tadeusz Soplica (Michal Zebrowski) in love with two female characters: one is Zosia (Alicja Bachleda) – a 14-year-old girl of youthful, innocent joys; the other is Telimena (Grazyna Szapolowska) - a lady of extravagant behavior and tastes of luxury. In between come various characters, including impetuous Gerwazy (Daniel Olbrychski), young count-artist Horeszko (Marek Kondrat), and a humble priest Robak (Boguslaw Linda) who hides his secret till the very last hour of his life ...

The factor that goes with characters and, more specifically, the manner we perceive them is the strongest point of the movie: performances. Although the task to play the roles and say their lines in poem appears to be particularly difficult, most of the cast craft their performances with exceptional flair. It is thanks to them that we all may feel the story go on naturally. Daniel Olbrychski is magnificent as Gerwazy focusing on the aforementioned impetuosity, Boguslaw Linda can be referred to as 'convincing modesty', Ms Szapolowska says her lines with desirable elegance and Michal Zebrowski together with youthful Alicja Bachleda are a fine staff for the couple in love.

Since Mickiewicz payed particular attention to the descriptions of nature, the film does not skip this aspect. It can boast wonderful shots of the green fields, memorable clouds, returning storks, silent forests and beautiful sunsets. Being filmed in an artistic manner, it evokes a unique atmosphere and constitutes a sort of moving painting of idyllic landscapes. The narration by Adam Mickiewicz portrayed by Krzysztof Kolberger adds more importance to it providing the emotions of the author. The brilliant direction by Andrzej Wajda and the musical score by Wojciech Kilar supply a viewer with undeniable experience. Moreover, some scenes remain so intensely in the memory that any sensitive viewer (sensitive to art) will truly be absorbed by watching. Here, I would like to mention famous bear hunting, confession of Jacek Soplica and witty but elegant coffee making sequence. Just a pity there is not a famous mushroom picking tour described widely by Mickiewicz.

If you asked me what this movie means to me, my answer would be simple: an experience for eyes and soul, great cinema which returns after a period of absence, which returns like the upright storks that long for the sublimity of patriot's homeland.

That's very true: this film's redeeming quality (if any) are the dialogues, and also narrator's voice-overs, which have been taken verbatim from "Pan Tadeusz", the Polish 19th century verse epic by Adam Mickiewicz. Mickiewicz was an excellent poet (one of the strongest in Polish language, and of decent standing in European literature of 19th century), and "Pan Tadeusz", written in 1834, is one of his peak works. The text, written in syllabotonic rhymed verse, is at time funny, at times touching, but always flowing and vibrant. The epic tells a story from the lives of Polish lesser gentry in eastern part of the former Commonwealth of Poland (these parts are now in Lithuania or Byelarus) in the times of Napoleon's conquests. The plot includes a little bit of love story, a little bit of war (skirmishes, really), mystery, intrigue, resistance against Poland's occupiers, scenes of everyday life - all with a good measure of nostalgia thrown in, as it was written by Mickiewicz as emigree in Paris, with the patriotic goal to cheer up (literally, in Polish, "to strengthen the hearts") of other emigrees and of Poles in the partitioned and non-existing Poland, at the time shortly after yet another unsuccessful uprising against the Russian Empire.

"Pan Tadeusz", the movie, is a costume drama directed by Andrzej Wajda, the Polish director with some notable previous work under his belt. Into this film he brings mainly his experience and routine as filmmaker. The acting, with few exceptions, fails to impress, the actors simply mill around and recite the splendid lines by Mickiewicz. The camera-work is passable, with some nice shots of the beautiful locations. Also scenography and costumes are decent. What stands out is the music by the renowned Wojciech Kilar. But then again, it is standing out against the backdrop of a, frankly, not very exciting movie.

All in all: the most interesting feature of this film is unfortunately lost in translation from rhymed verse in 19th century Polish.