pibwl

I am not a fan of cliche tv crime mini serials, but this one turned out different. My wife started to watch, I was only peeking from the second episode, but got involved from the third...

The main character is an energetic ex-policewoman Weronika from Warsaw, who settles in a provincial village, where everyone knows each other from generations. I was impressed by bold, natural and emotional performance of Julia Kijowska. Her character is an opposition of a calm introvertic young policeman Daniel Piotr Pacek, yet there is a chemistry between the two, who quickly start working together, despite Weronika isn't in the police anymore. There is not a big crime in the village, not any serial killer - just a case of a nun, who was apparently ran over by the car in a purpose. There is also a case of one lost girl. Weronika feels, that these matters might be connected with each other and with two suspicious local competing businessmen, or with several citizens performing pagan rituals.

A core of the community is a church and a female monastery, led by a respectable priest, played in charismatic way by Olaf Lubaszenko. Does the enclosure monastery hide a mystery?

The plot develops in an interesting and unobvious way. After a showdown, we actually might be left with a question: was there really a crime from a moral point of view? Who is responsible?

Nice old-fashioned Czech(oslovak)-style fairy tale, a kind of a road movie for children - or adults who would like to feel like they were ten again. Young innocent village girl founds an enchanted feather and summons a prince enchanted as a raven. She obviously falls in pure love with the prince.

Because of her selfish sisters, she cannot summon the prince anyomore, so she has to set out on a journey to break the spell, cast by an evil princess. During her journey the cheerful girl helps people, sings, gathers artifacts, teams up with a friend with special abilities, and confronts the princess.

Nice thing to look at, especially in a lazy afternoon, especially if you liked Czechoslovak fairy tales.

The main problem with this serial, as with the original book, is that it may be emotionally moving, but learning a false view on how the life in a death camp looked like. The book accuracy was crushed by proffessional historians and Holocaust researchers, and the serial is not much improved - despite its authors knew all the criticism. There are also proffessional scholar reviews of the serial, pointing out numerous situations, that just could not have happened. The book author and filmmakers are apparently unaware, that there were strict procedures in the camp, and even SS members had to obey - especially those of lower rank. Moreover, free walks of prisoners were impossible, and Lali was not a privileged person there, only a qualified personnel, treated a little better than others. It is not a computer game, when you direct a main character and move where you want.

The story might have been a true one in general - but it was told after many decades, by an old man, to an author, who had no idea how the camp life looked like. She tried to retell the story how she could, but the book was just an effect of her imagination. And the serial is an effect of the imagination of the crew, how the events described in the book looked like. Add some horror, cruelty and faeces , and you are justified, that you show a real life and death in the camp, not just a romance to attract viewvers...

It seems, that the filmmakers wanted just to make money from a 'fashionable' Holocaust theme. There are hundreds of ways to show a romance on the screen, but a death camp is not an appropriate background, due to respect to millions of its victims . Main heroes of the story survived - but not thanks to strength of their love, but luck, and the fact, that they were assigned lighter jobs in the camp. Millions had no chance to develop their love. And we owe them respect.