Starring: Marian Dziędziel, Borys Szyc, Magdalena Czerwińska
Directed by: Rafael Lewandowski
Rating: ★★★☆☆
It seems that Central European cineastes needed at least a couple of decades to get to grips with national struggles for reconciliation after 1989. The Czech drama Kawasaki’s Rose, which was submitted for Best Foreign Language Film at the 83rd Academy Awards, blazed a new trail. As well as dealing with the same issue, both Jan Hrebejk’s Kawasaki’s Rose and Kret (The Mole) end up with scenes of everyday life that are disturbing in their banality.
French-Polish director Rafael Lewandowki has put aside his accomplishments as a documentary filmmaker to direct a family drama dealing with the unpredictable effects of the ‘lustracja’ (political cleansing) campaign during the Kaczynski administration. In Lewandowki’s film, the ‘victim’ of the moral cleansing is former miners’ leader Zygmunt, aka ‘The Mole’ (Marian Dziędziel), who is accused of having covertly supported the bloody pacification of a protest under Martial Law.
Zygmunt, tried and convicted by the media, decides to relocate from Bielsko-Biała to the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region, where the largest Polish diaspora in France is to be found. Paweł (Borys Szyc), who does not believe the charges against his father, is married to Kasia (Magdalena Czerwińska) the daughter of a miner killed during a strike.
The Mole evokes the witch-hunting atmosphere and climate of mutual suspicion of the period beautifully. Szyc takes the lion’s share of the credit as the tormented Paweł. Lewandowski’s drama, which was ludicrously marketed as a thriller, honorably represented Polish cinema at the Montreal World Film Festival.
Originally published by The Krakow Post on September 22 2011