Poland's Black Orpheus—a cinematic triumph, but will risk-averse distributors see it that way?
The cult novel from which Xawery Zulawski’s latest film Snow White, Russian Red was adapted has been hailed as “the Polish Trainspotting.” Yet this extraordinary piece of cinema, which was screened in early March as part of London’s 8th Polish film festival, is actually closer to the work of David Lynch and Gaspar Noé. Why, then, has it not found a distributor?
On its digitally-foliated surface, Snow White, Russian Red is a boy-loses-girl, boy-gets-girl-back-again tale. But looking closer we find ourselves caught in a hallucinatory, visceral, hilarious vision of the rotten core of post-communist, pre-EU Polish identity, seen through the dilated pupils of track-suited lovelorn yob, Silney.
With his bald head and child-like face, Zulawski’s protagonist resembles a fallen angel just landed on earth; as he steps from the murk into razor-sharp focus, sweating, it’s as if his scalp has been dipped in heated wax. The film’s exquisite high-definition photography is reminiscent of Michael Mann’s Collateral, with palettes of queasy greens and misty browns, or of Sophia Coppolla’s Marie Antoinette, as the harsh electric reds of the Polish flag cut through hazy landscapes.
Spurned by his true love, the drug-addicted Magda, Silney (Borys Szyc) descends into a downward spiral of sex, drugs and violence. Searching for salvation he encounters a succession of angels and demons (an anorexic virgin Goth, a speed-wrecked gangster) and his life becomes wound in an ever-tighter Gordian knot. Then he meets Dorota Maslowska, author of the cult novel upon which the film is based. She is a police station receptionist. “You’re not here, I’m not here, we’re not here,” she tells our anti-hero as the walls of her office slide away. And suddenly a different narrative emerges: Silny, it seems, is offered the chance to retrieve Magda from hell, or lose her through drug-fueled paranoia and doubt. It’s a Vertigo or Camus’s Black Orpheus. Or are these the death-dreams of the dying man; is this Odd Man Out transferred to 21st-century Poland? A social-realist Jacob’s Ladder? All of the above? As with most great films, there are no easy answers.
Yet as too often is the case, it is precisely the great strengths of Snow White, Russian Red—its twisted meta-narrative, its stylistic iconoclasm, and its refusal to offer an easy moral centre—that would make most distributors wary. Its message is certainly not a commercially palatable one: Silney’s fantasies of destroying the Russian black market are laced with xenophobia; the unregulated international free market is seen to be destroying Poland. But whether or not you agree with its politics, this film is a brilliantly inventive, shockingly funny, and strangely moving portrait of contemporary urban life, which makes most independent low-budget cinema look passé and bland by comparison. And most importantly, the questions it asks about identity in the postmodern age are pertinent to countless settings: it could equally take place on a South London estate. Forget the disappointment of Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland. This is the dark fairytale to watch. Let’s hope some distributor sees it that way.
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It’s good to see a piece that focuses on one country’s problems in getting its films screened internationally. This is a big cultural and economic issue for European film industries and independent film makers.The big bucks behind the New York-Hollywood moviemaking industry and the allied international cinema monopoly networks that operate distribution inhibitions against foreign language movies have homogenised the movie-viewing habits of the general public in many countries outside the USA.
For many years the French Government has promoted a cultural policy that favours French language movies in France; although high profile festivals like Cannes every May robustly promote internationalism.French movie enthusiasts have cosmopolitan tastes. It is time for governments in Britain, Ireland, Poland, Czech Republic, Italy and elsewhere to emulate the cultural policies of the French Government. The French see their great movie making tradition as both a cultural and economic enterprise: what is good for cinema-as-art is also good for economic and social well being.
I know many people in Britain and other countries dislike the institutions of the European Union. Regardless of misgivings, some of them based on concerns for national sovereignty and others based on chauvinism, it would be opportune for European film making interests including independent producers to get together across national bounderies in a co-ordinated campaign to promote cinema-as-art and to promote national and foreign language film enterprise against the homogenising power of the New York-Hollywood axis.
Just as in Britain there are free pubs not allied to the big breweries, so too there could be free cinemas not tied to the inhibiting distribution practices of the chain cinemas. The possibilities needn’t stop there. Shops that would emphasise national and independent movies from European countries; and more government funding of local film clubs, including mobile cinemas visiting smaller localities as in parts of France and Ireland, are other ways of asserting film viewing diversity.
South London estates are no worse than North London estates.
Jerry:
“Well-written review, but I won’t be waiting for the film’s release.”