“Wesele”, screen adaptation of Gross and Grabowski

Wojciech Smarzowski made a film about Poles today and Poles during the war. He did a wonderful thing – we are all presented with more contempt than the directors of Joseph Goebbels’ film. Jakob Augustin Maciejowski discusses Logisich Smarzowski’s latest film – “Wesel” in the new issue of weekly “Sieci” .

Even left-wing critics don’t have the guts to unequivocally praise “The Wedding” as a good movie. They write that it is “significant”, “courageous” and “sharp”, but no one will say that Smarzowski’s new film is a hit. It’s hard to appreciate the artistic value – the 2021 painting draws many threads from the “Wedding” from 2004. Frustrated primitive Poles […]Sex is everywhere, fornication in marriage, drunken guests, curses. One exception – film critic Tomas Rachik stated that Smarzowski created work tailored to…

– We read.

The author asserts:

Meanwhile, this movie’s curiosity problem is different. This picture is painfully distorted and very unrealistic, and all these historical lies and lies are a cinematic version of the books of Jean-Tomas Gross, Jan Grabowski and Barbara Engelking. The creators of the new film “Wesele” as if in a state of paranoia wanted to include in the 130-minute picture all the incredible theses of these authors who were already famous for their impartiality and even forgery of historical sources. Nothing historically stuck there, and the scenes that attribute Poles to primitivism, anti-Semitism, theft, prostitution, racism, greed and simplicity are pathetic, unmistakable, and unimpressive.

The columnist also introduces the plot:

The film tells about a contemporary wedding, organized by the father of the bride, in which nothing will work, everything will be spoiled by the Polish past, dressed in historical dung. […]. The bride’s grandfather, in the attire of a veteran, who remembers the scenes of the war, tops.

Maciejewski notes that the film…

A very exaggerated picture of pre-war society. In Smarzowski’s version, the Poles think of nothing but a pogrom against the Jews. When the Germans come, they only help determine the details of the organization of the crime. The image of the Germans in the “Wedding” will not be ashamed of the Ministry of Propaganda of the Third Reich. At Smarzowski, they are intellectuals and decent people who stay aloof. In 2021 – caught in the scandal of the father of the bride, they were victims of primitive Poles. In 1941 – they only supervised the Council of Poles on the killing of Jews […]. Smarzowski is a loyal disciple of Gross – he wants to show that it was the eternal and anti-Semitism of the Poles that led to the Holocaust, and only the Germans allowed it. The same is repeated by Grabowski and Engelking, and the director of “Wesele” wants him to be their first student.

According to Masievsky, the film’s visuals are powerful, insulting, unambiguous and hypocritical.

Maybe they will act with someone, maybe they will convince someone. However, the answer to this misperception cannot be another lie or candy story about perfect Poles – not empty anger, not vulgar criticism, not blunt interpretations of Sumlinsky. Especially since Smarzowski simply made a propaganda product, but did it not under German duress, but with the zeal that he put into the characters of his heroes. But hate is a very sad condition. At least it is easy for us to understand the slogan of the Polish subway distributed in German-occupied cities: “Only pigs sit in the cinema.”

More in the latest issue of “Sieci”, on sale from October 18 this year, also in the form of an electronic version in http://www.wsieciprawdy.pl/e-wydanie.html.

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