Chris Knipp Writing: Movies, Politics, Art


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PostPosted: Thu Apr 29, 2021 11:02 am 
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PIOTR ADAMSKI: EASTERN (2019) - KINO POLSKA

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A Slavic neo-Western of feuding families and archaic social codes

Again as in Kino Polska's lead selection by Malgorzata Szumowska [url="http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?4963-KINO-POLSKA-at-BAM-April-30-May-6-2021&p=39505#post39505"]Never Gonna Snow Again[/url], we see Polish society placed under a magnifying glass by shooting a film inside a gated community filled with tasteful McMansions. This time however the result is a dark and dystopian - but sometimes playful and surprising - satire in which a major source of inspiration was the Kanun, the medieval Albanian code of laws, with a contemporary nod to some current politicians' and local Polish governments' disturbing recent calls for a return to "traditional values." The chilly style is partly explained by Adamski's origins as a conceptual artist. The playfulness and surprise are indications that he's discovered a knack for this new medium. Again, and much more overtly than with Szumowska, one feels the influence or the spirit of the Greek director Yorgos Yanthimnos, especially, as points out Jack Blackwell in [url="https://we-love-cinema.com/reviews/eastern/"]We Love Cinema[/url], his Dogtooth and The Killing of a Sacred Deer.

One can imagine Yanthimos making a film like this in which a teen girl, Klara Kowalski (Paulina Krzyzanska), of the feuding Kowalski family, hunts down a young son of the Kowalski's enemy the Novaks in the woods and shoots him in the head, then she and helpers set up his body with a rifle in a ritualistic pose. Soon the response comes back to the Kowalski family that they must either pay blood money for Klara, "buy out her blood" to the Novaks through established legal procedures of retribution, or Klara in turn must die. Novak daughter Ewa (Maja Pankiewicz) is assigned to retaliate against Klara. Unless her mother (Anna Klos-Kleszczewska) is willing to pay the blood money, which, for her own reasons, not being able to afford to being a likely one, she is not. Ewa's father (Marcin Czarnik) has his own troubles, which illustrate the machismo of the system and the emasculation that can occur for those who don't live up to the cruel code.

A whole system of modernized blood feud culture is sketched in, such as funeral ceremonies where cigarettes are doled out on little trays at a crematorium. These modern Hatfields and McCoys or Capulets and Montagues drive shiny new black cars, live in their McMansions, and women just as much as men are very involved with their high tech rifles and pistols. What they do in their free time, if any, and where they get their money we don't know, but Adamski has a lot of fun playing with his own rules and constructing this conceptual Slavic "Eastern."

Speaking of own rules, when Ewa comes to see Klara, things take a different turn. It seems perhaps the modern generation may not be quite so up for getting killed back and forth and may want to improvise a whole new playbook. Ewa has a surprising improvisation. But the film has a sardonic finale which we cannot reveal here: it's important that the viewer doesn't know where things are going to go.

As Jack Blackwell points out in his review, the film suggests that an insatiable blood lust of "bruised pride" and a "patriarchal honor system" appear combined symptoms of "unchallenged casual misogyny" and "the stifling boredom of suburbia," that result in "'civilized' people going murderously mad." The mirror Adamski holds up to contemporary Poland here, Blackwell argues, reveals "an ugly reflection that, for all its absurdity, rings true in a frightening manner." But the director also simultaneously keeps on entertaining us with "an exciting cat and mouse thriller." Conceptualist Adamski clearly has hit the ground running in his new genre.

Eastern, 78 mins., debuted in Poland at Koszalin Jun. 13, 2019, showing at other festivals including Gdynia, Ischia and Raindance. Screened for this review as part of the seven-film virtual Brooklyn Academy of Music Apr. 30-May 6, 2021 Kino Polska series.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.


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