A lighter post for a change

Some of my blogging friends noticed that my posts recently are on a heavy side. I have been aware of the fact that I am overly preoccupied with issues of a serious nature and that this has impact on subjects of my blogging. At the same time writing is some sort of therapy for me and the way to clarify for myself bothering me issues. I also know that I skirt around the real things which are serious challenges around my health. I have cancer and go through the regular treatments that are not much fun. There is also a lot of unknown ahead of me. One could say; isn’t it so for anybody? Yes, but the remnants of a mathematician in me come to think about probabilities and those are not in my favour. So, I worry and try to find answers how to live well with the situation I am in. This spills to my blog in some ways.

It is not a light start to what was going to be a light post, but my intentions are to write about Ladies in Black, the Australian film which is lovely, funny, intelligent and finishes with a number of happy ends. Just what the doctor ordered and I really enjoyed.

                                     

For my current mood it was a panacea of the first sort and I give it my personal, very subjective 10 out of 10.

The film is about Australia in 1959 when reffos (post war refugees from Europe) were finding their way to embrace the new life and becoming millionaires. The conviction that Australia is the land of opportunities, great weather, freedom and the place where if one wants to, one becomes a millionaire without much of a problem. I must say that I feel the same about the possibilities in this country, especially at the time of the action of the film. And especially concerning reffos from Hungary who came here after the horror of times of 1956. With their abilities, fresh outlook, knowledge of European ways and often good education they were bound to be successful and very rich as a result. I believe that statistics would confirm that. I often thought that my clever father and talented mother would have made me a millionaires’ daughter if they came of Australia after the war. Coming in 1979 I was not that clever or lucky, but I still have lived a good life here (at least in some aspects).

One of my favourite scenes of the film is the exchange between two Hungarian men who admire the weather and one of them raises his hands towards the sky praising the weather and the water views from the balcony of his house exclaiming: isn’t it wonderful! The other asks: Are you happy then? And the answer is somewhat hesitant: I would not be that trivial.

Very European, funny and very silly in fact. Also, this is how I was and perhaps still am. One must have some complicated Dostoevsky's feelings to be considered a sophisticated person. Pure happiness is for simpletons. Hmm…

Ladies in black are ladies who work in a prestigious department store for well to do Australians. The head of the fashion department is a reffo, a very stylish one with Parisian experience and exquisite taste in cloth.  She takes under her wing a young and very clever girl who took the job in the department store during the holidays after her HSC. She passed the exams with flying colours and will have a great future ahead of her. Very different to her mother as a new era is only  just starting for women in Australia. Germain Greer will soon start to provoke and change girls’ psyche. Our heroine wants to be a poet, or and actress, or… a novelist. She reads Anna Karenina and she wants to go to uni. Her father says that no daughter of his would go uni and we are observing the change in his thinking under the influence of salami and wine that he is introduced to and comes to the conclusion – I can get used to it. We all know that he will change his mind and that his clever daughter will go to uni after all. With his blessing too. In the meantime, she will be introduced to European society with Hungarians in majority, learn to dress well, drink champagne and deal with being kissed on the hand. I never liked this type of greeting, especially in Polish winter when one had to take off one’s glove in very cold weather to let a man, who she was saying hello to, clumsily kiss the frozen, shaking hand. Now I think that those times had a lot of charm even (or especially) this continental kiss on the hand. And Sydney of 1959 seems very attractive in the charming old fashion way.

                                                  

Lovely film that will be forgotten soon as it is just charming fluff.

Sydney Film Festival - Polish films

There have been two Polish films shown in this year's film festival - Cold War and Mug. Both awarded. Cold War in Cannes and Mug in Berlin.

                                                                     

I have read and heard a lot about the film Cold War. So much and so positive that I expected a film that is really spellbinding and very moving. Has it been for me like that or am I a little disappointed? Strangely enough I experience both of the reactions. If one expects perfection in anything, disappointment is a consequence of such high expectations. I knew that the film is going to be black and white but I did not expect a small screen, so my first reaction was a surprise that the screen felt so restricting. I was looking at the first scenes from a perspective of a foreigner. Will an Australian understand the meaning of the film. After all, Polish specifics are difficult to comprehend especially by an Australian. I would say that an average Australian will shrug their shoulders and move to more familiar and practical subjects than neurotic feelings of some foreigners. I do not think that the film can gain popularity outside Europe. Too dark in a tender way, too sensitive, the story insufficiently explained and really told by omissions. You have to be tuned in to dark moods of a foreign kind.

I do not think I have enticed anyone to see the film if and when it hits Australian movie theaters, but this is a film one should see at her/his own risk of emotional damage.

One of the scenes I like.

The film is told in an elliptical way starting from 1949 to finish about ten years later. My times of understanding events around me came much later than that, or maybe I was too naïve to understand it at all when I lived in Poland. Still, I understood some on the scenes in the way a non-Pole would have great problems to understand. Some nuances of the film are not accessible to foreigners, in my opinion. Maybe this is just as well as it is so depressing. Thinking about it I feel sorry for the nation. We turned out not that bad considering the times of the war and the years after. I wonder what was more damaging to the soul of the nation, the Nazis’ killing of Poles with a special focus on Polish inteligencia or the Soviet friends reversing the social structure and lifting the uneducated to the top?

The film is a romance without a happy end, there is no happiness as a part of love at all. Maybe glimpses, fleeting moments of elation. It kept my attention completely and the movie theatre was unusually quiet during the film. There is no melodrama in the film, the people meet their destiny and events of their lives resigning to the bleak realities and need to survive politically, economically and emotionally. Until they cannot continue…

It is a good film and from me 10 out of 10.

                                                                   

During the Film Festival of Sydney, I have seen another Polish film – Mug. It has been awarded in the Berlin Film Festival. We, Poles, look for confirmation of our self-worth in signs of international acceptance. Such a small weakness. The film got an international recognition so I should be proud, but watching it I cringed and protested internally against Poland and Poles shown in the film. Bigotry, narrowmindedness, cruelty, drunkenness and acceptance of drunks, rudeness, bad language (I heard bad language in life, but Polish offenses and swearing are of particular quality and power)…It all made me feel ashamed. It was an unpleasant film to watch. It is a comedy and when the audience laughed. I made me think Gogol’s thought “What are you laughing at? You are laughing at yourself.” Only that this mainly applied to my compatriots and myself. Why wallow in such self-depreciation? To notice and change? Only that those who notice the problems are not typically the ones who need so much to change.

An unpleasant film to watch, at least for a Pole.  4 out of 10.

The Wife

                                                     

I have been catching up with films in the last few days and it has been a serious catchup as I have seen five films in less than a week and there is one more ahead of me. This is Sydney Festival event and my local cinema is one of the movie theaters that takes part. The films that are shown have not yet been shown to general public and some of them are not intended to be screened more than at this particular occasion. Looks that I have chosen rather popular films that will be possible to see in cinemas later. Maybe except the two Polish films – Mug that got Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize in Berlin 2018 and Cold War that was awarded the best film director in Cannes 2018 for Paul Pawlikowski. I will write about the films at some stage.

Yesterday I saw The Wife with Glen Close as the main attraction of the film. I am little less enthusiastic than the critics and the reviews of The Guardian and Rotten Tomatoes. Maybe because I do not particularly like Glen Close. She seems superficial and affectatious to me. I must admit that how she appears in her interviews should not reflect on her art as an actress. But it seems to influence my judgement.

What is perhaps more to the point is how did I like her performance in this particular film. And yes, it was a remarkable performance, subtle, moving and I give it the highest marks and my admiration. I still left the theatre somewhat disappointed. Maybe even confused? The film seems to portray The Wife as a sort of a victim and her husband, brilliantly played by Jonathan Pryce as the person who wronged her. I do not see the story this way at all, even with my feministic leaning. I buy the meaning of the outburst of the husband when he tells how it was for him. Here comes the spoiler : The story is about two people who want to be writers, he is a professor who teaches how to write and she is a talented writer who is learning. However she does not have a chance to be noticed in the male dominated field and her writing, however brilliant it might be, does not stand a chance to be published. This is what she is told by a more experienced woman and she believes it. She gives up on writing but supports her lover, the professor, in his writing efforts. Eventually, editing  his book she re-writes it with a minor contribution of the original author. The book is a hit and as it is published under his name, the glory is his.  However, being very much in love, they are both happy with the situation. This is the beginning of their future life together and it is based on the wife being the ghost writer for her husband. She writes the books under his name and he plays the role of the famous, very talented writer. It goes on for years, until the time when the man gets the Nobel Prize for the work of his wife who is smiling shyly, happy but always in his shadow. At this point of time she can not continue with the mystification, but her plans are not verbalized so we never really find our what she would consider to be a satisfactory solution from her point of view.

 

To me, they came to an agreement that was serving both of them and in my opinion, she got a better part of the deal. Her part was not to be famous, but she got her work published and she knew the impact her writing had on the readers. He played a humiliating role of a pretender compensating his paper tiger situation by romances that gave him some feeling of self-worth and power. She tolerated it up to a point but at the end it was all too much for her to accept and live with. I am on his side, not her. This is the reason for my confusion. Have I missed some psychological truth and got the whole story wrong? I do not think so. Maybe I misunderstood the critics? This is possible.

One can take the whole story as a meta model of lives of capable women who are in a relationship and in love with less talented men. In olden days, women did not have rights to vote and in fact rights to live the life they would choose for themselves. In those times being the brain behind a man and directing his actions was not challenged or even noticed. As I am reading the new version of Macbeth, Lady Macbeth comes to mind as one of negative influences a woman can have on a man. Those times are gone and women have rights to work and to their own successes. There is a price for that though. While many men tolerate such situations to a point, often happens that he needs to re-establish his superior position. This typically can be done only with another partner. The relationship breaks up. Perhaps it was doomed form the start, but we often live with and in illusions for years.

The question is why men need to feel superior to women? Conditioning? Whatever the reason is, this is the situation in many cases.

Back to the film - my rating 8 out of 10.

The story is a bit far fetched for me even if played very convincingly.