Recommended. Łukasz Palkowski wins again. After „Bogowie” he's created another hit, also based on a true story. This time about Jerzy Górski, once a drug addict who quit and went on to win a Double Ironman triathlon. In the movie he makes a cameo as a sports juror. Such a life change translates to a multitude of changes in the appearance of the main protagonist: losing weight or gaining muscles, shaving his head and regrowing hair, cuts, bruises, abrasions - altogether 6 make ups, 4 wigs and a 6-month break in shooting to let the actor build muscles. You get to see all stages of the addiction and withdrawal, including cold turkey. Thanks do Piotr Sobocinski's cinematography vomiting is factual and not disgusting. The crack house is a masterpiece: dishevelled bums with cut hands injecting, a girl anaesthetised so badly she stubs out fags on her own hand. Jerzy's world is mismatched with reality to the point where he's talking to his friend's dead body, smoking simultaneously and brushing the ash off the shrouds with his fingers. His internal struggle is shown perfectly in the mirror plot. Great attention was put to the recreation of the 70s and 80s: bell-bottoms worn together with a sheepskin coat in 1978, calf's foot jelly and vodka on the table as well as naked pictures on the walls in the 80s, pervasive smoking, hairstyles and facial hair like in communist Poland of the time. Also getting a passport which required using connections and circumventing laws. Agatha Dominik, a Pole living in Los Angeles, americanized Maciej Karpinski's script to make the story more versatile. She also wrote the mirror plot invented by the director. Croatia stands in for Alabama in the movie. Famous Polish documentalist Andrzej Fidyk together with a great number of feature directors recommended the production for public funding.
UNA ESPECIE DE FAMILIA (A SORT OF FAMILY)
Recommended. Set in Argentina. The harrowing process of a legally dubious adoption stays with you after leaving the cinema. Both the woman's determination to have a baby and the callousness of the agency extorting her money just shock.
HANS ZIMMER LIVE
Recommended. The show was mind-blowing. The more economic option of "attending" Hans Zimmer's Prague concert at the cinema (Muranow in Warsaw in my case) provided a riveting melomaniac experience in comfortable soft seats instead of plastic ones at the Prague venue. The gig started with close-ups of bows drawn across strings and the front row scantily clad violin players coming out together with the famous composer who looked so inconspicuous you'd easily overlook him on the street. Hans Zimmer turned out to be a social mixer at ease with his team and with speaking to the audience. His biggest problem with " The Dark Knight" was to juxtapose Batman with suave Bruce Wayne. He joked he had "a 9 to 5 job: from 9 pm to 5 am" and told a yarn of how Ridley Scott rang him at 9 am to ask if he'd write music for "Gladiator". Later, hearing of the topic, his wife remarked it was a men's film. Then he realized they needed a... muse - I wonder if he's still so sexist nowadays or if it was that 16 years ago a woman could be nothing more than a muse. He also played the guitar and the piano himself. Spotlights cast red, yellow or blue light on featured instrumentalists. No movie fragments were shown, the huge screen display highlighted the music instead. It showed a thin red line for the theme from the movie of the same title which turned into an all red screen. "The Lion King" was represented by the chorus in yellow. "The Dark Knight" by a pattern resembling pipe organs. All of that surpassed watching some of the movies for which he composed the score. Angelic voices, changing tempo and mood touched me deeply. I'm afraid to say it but... the concert proves cinema can't do without music while film music can exist in its own right.
WARSAW JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL
LON
Watchable. A synopsis of a life story terminated in a concentration camp. Depressing but its impact is weakened by animation.
MORE ALIVE THAN DEAD
Recommended. An entertaining documentary about Freud's legacy. It brings to light the fact that psychoanalysis is a scam but his ideas permeate the contemporary world. The notion of liberating oneself of social constraints brought upon: the sex revolution, feminism, anti-war demonstrations, all sorts of freedom movements, Gay Pride, consumerism, political and commercial manipulations of human groups, irreverent jokes, possibly selfies, since self-expression has led to narcissism, and even mems, e.g. two sumo wrestlers with a caption: "I need a hug." Defense mechanisms and the reptile brain belong to the few psychologic terms derived from Freud which last till this day.
TERRA ITALIANA FILM FESTIVAL
Organised according to the Italian attitude to time: each movie started late. But, on the other hand, Q&As lasted till the last question asked. To those not juggling two festivals at the same time it must have felt friendly.
L'ARTE DELLA FELICITA (THE ART OF HAPPINESS)
Walked out. Aren't Italians supposed to be vivacious? The philosphical animation in style noir wore me down completely.
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