Directed by: Mateusz Kudła, Anna Kokoszka-Romer
Rating: ★★★★☆
Almost two decades after directing The Pianist (2002), it’s hard to believe that Roman Polański will craft another autobiographical movie about his turbulent youth. Polanski, Horowitz. The Wizards from the Ghetto (2021) is yet another confirmation that most likely his will not direct another film recounting his infancy in order “to keep his memories unspoiled”. Eventually it was Polański himself who proposed to involve his lifelong friend and acclaimed photographer Ryszard Horowitz in what was supposed to be a portrait of one of the most extraordinary and hear-trending childhoods of any director in cinema history. Mateusz Kudła and Anna Kokoszka-Romer, both having a track record in television production, seized the opportunity to extend the scope of their project.
Polański and Horowitz are Krakow-born émigrés who gained recognition as artists outside Poland. The atrocities of Nazi occupation left a deep mark on the life of one and the other. Like many other persons in their life stage, they make jokes around chilling out on vacation in Hawaii. If the are not the ones to deserve a break from everything then who else does? The viewer is left with the impression that Horowitz has internalized trauma while Polański instead is the kind of personality that needs to let it all out. The former has sported a more-bitter-than-sweet gentle smile on his face through the years. The latter instead continues to display the cynical smirk of who has gone through the mill for most of his life. One burns inside and the other outside.
Somehow less exuberant than the five-year older companion, Auschwitz survivor Horowitz is the perfect foil to Polański’s flamboyant persona. The duality that the documentary makers managed to capture in this documentary surfaces in a marvellously natural way as the buddies unfold memories of their childhood in their native habitat. From this perspective, Polanski, Horowitz. The Wizards from the Ghetto is a restrained ode to Krakow in the old days when Miodowa street in the Jewish district was home to open-air prostitution and now defunct Ars movie theatre on Świętego Jana Street was still named Apollo.
Kudła and Kokoszka-Romer enrich the story with a few but significant cues to enhance the digging expedition in the past. Thank to their research, Polański was given the opportunity to reunite with the heir of his rescuers. It was the Buchała family that secretly sheltered him at the countryside in the village of Wysoka in the surroundings of Krakow during World War II. Polanski, Horowitz. The Wizards from the Ghetto is arguably a brilliant “documentary buddy film” about two wonderful octogenarians holding on to their life while cultivating the power of remembrance.
Film Reviewed by Giuseppe Sedia
Published by Kino Mania on January 13, 2022