Starring: Beata Fido, Lech Łotocki, Redbad Klynstra
Directed by: Antoni Krauze
Rating: ★☆☆☆☆
Despite being excluded from the main competition, Antoni Krauze’s controversial picture about the Smoleńsk catastrophe was screened this year at the Gdynia Film Festival for the record of the festival-goers. Like many others domestic viewers, festival director Michał Oleszczyk believes that Smolensk is the first feature film devoted to the Polish Air Force crash. Such a statement is partially true as Prosto z nieba (Straight from Heaven, 2011), directed by indie director Piotr Matwiejczyk, is rather domestic drama almost entirely focused on the reactions of the victims’ families to an aerial disaster that has stirred up the Polish nation since 10 April 2010.
Eventually, Matwiejczyk’s effort, shaped on a really tight budget, sunk immediately into oblivion due to poor distribution and lack of advertising. Krauze’s picture, on the other hand, premiered in September 2016 at the National Opera in Warsaw in front of local politicians. Just as in the case of the nearest relatives of the victims, journalists were not invited to the “institutional” premiere in an attempt to avoid media criticism. Nonetheless, this was not a big loss for the non-intended audience. Unlike Matwiejczyk, Krauze gave a thrilling twist to the cinematic rendition of the aerial catastrophe.
The plot is centered on the investigation of Nina (Beata Fido), an obstinate but intrusive journalist who challenges the official version of the plane crash. Fido is not convincing as the main confidant of the victims’ families and aviation experts. At the same time the news footage about the masses fed with conspiratorial theories about Russia’s responsibility for the tragedy do not integrate well with the fictional scenes. The doubts about the official version of the accident mushroom as the film progresses.
Krauze’s film is also a cinematic encomium of Lech Kaczynski’s stance in Poland’s recent history. The political leader of the PiS party who died in the air crash is portrayed as the symbolic leader of the Georgian resistance against the Russian invasion in 2008 during a speech in Tbilisi filmed in a Hollywoodesque fashion. Beefed up with decent special effects and partisan television footage, Smolensk is an improper domestic propaganda film unsuitable for screening abroad.
Originally published by The Krakow Post on December 06, 2016