XABO: KSIADZ BONIECKI (XABO: FATHER BONIECKI)
Watchable. It never fails to tug on your heartstrings but... after 3 years of filming the priest, I'd expect better. It looks amateurish, has no structure. Even though the documentary has been translated into English, the film itself does not explain who the priest is or who and why has banned him from publishing - it's not clarified in the film that the Church authorities have - which makes his case a bit hard to comprehend. The titular priest is portrayed as a down to earth, humane, warm-hearted, devoted, extremely hard-working and a paragon of Christianity. The film is clearly meant as an antidote to the venom injected into the society by fundamentalist Catholic officials as well as politicians successfully dividing the nation. Rev. Adam Boniecki proclaims inclusion which, strangely, makes him a religious maverick. He's sage (and old). Large chunks of the film are existentialist which lets him share his gems of wisdom, e.g. in the emotive scene where an adult man tells him he can't come to terms with his mum's death the priest confesses he often asks his late mother for little favours like miraculous finding a parking spot. But the hardest hitting part is when he mentions his own personal sorrow about having to give up on marriage and having children. Is celibacy the root cause of the callousness of the institution of the Church as his deliberation indirectly infers?
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