Starring: Bogusław Linda, Marek Kondrat, Cezary Pazura
Directed by: Władysław Pasikowski
“Everybody is culpable, especially those individuals who were in government during the Second Word War,” said Władysław Pasikowski in a recent interview about the making of a new feature dealing with the infamous Jedwabne pogrom. It’s a sentiment strongly implied in the director’s classic cop movie Psy (Pigs) where good is not distinct from evil. The abolition of hated state institutions such as the Milicja Obywatelska (Citizens Militia) and the Służba Bezpieczeństwa (Security Service – the secret police) in the early 1990s led to the exclusion of many Poles from the new machinery of the state.
Pigs is a merciless portrait of a group of former SB agents who are willing to do anything in order to regain their former status. The samurai-like Lieutenant Franz Maurer (stunningly played by Bogusław Linda), recruited to the new Polish police force, is one of the inglorious ‘psy’ chasing down former colleagues who have sold out their already dubious integrity to smuggle amphetamines into Western Europe.
The film’s title, Psy (dogs), is the Polish equivalent of the porcine English-language slang word for police. The liberal use of swearing and the appalling torture scenes almost immediately made Pigs a local succès de scandale. Despite these elements, its grandeur is to be found in the existentialist and Melvillesque tone that permeates Maurer’s walk on the wild side. It’s worth remembering that Pigs was released before world cinema had yet been exposed to Tarantino-mania.
Originally published by The Krakow Post on October 21, 2011