Starring: Marcin Dorociński, Agata Kulesza, Kinga Preis
Directed by: Wojciech Smarzowski
Rating: ★★★★☆
Once again, Wojciech Smarzowski ends a movie with a high-angle shot that draws back from the human level to reveal the landscape. In Smarzowski’s previous feature, Dom Zły (The Dark House, 2009), the camera turns from the scene of the crime to show the tiny figures of villagers set against a Brugel-esque panorama.
In Róża (Rose, 2011) it soars above the heads of the characters to show a wasteland reminiscent of a Western. Smarzowski’s drama takes place during the ‘Weryfikacja’ program in Mazury following World War II, during which the Communist authorities divided the population into those ‘verified’ as Polish and those ‘unverified’ and, therefore, regarded as ethnic Germans.
Tadeusz (Marcin Dorociński) a former Polish officer who has survived the Warsaw Uprising attempts to start a new life in Mazury by helping war widow Róża (Agata Kulesza) to rebuild her farm. He does his best to protect her property and person from marauding Soviet soldiers involved in the verification process, and the forced deportation of ethnic Masurians. There is no law in a war-ravaged territory where mines are used to mark and defend the borders of Róża’s property.
From a moral point of view Rose is a Western crammed with violence but filmed without complacency. Smarzowski ironically referred to himself as the “third Cohen brother” in a recent interview, and there may be a kernel of truth in this, at least in his commitment to injecting a dose of realism into movie genres that have never been fully developed in Polish cinema.
Originally published by The Krakow Post on March 26, 2012