The Wall, a barrier between two Polands
- Screenwriter Dariusz Glazer’s first foray into feature film is a story of love and social redemption
A demanding and ambitious debut for Dariusz Glazer, who graduated from the Katowice Film School, did his masters at Andrzej Wajda’s Pracownia Filmowa, and is described as “one of the most talented screenwriters of the new generation” by journalist Magdalena Felis. The Wall (Mur) [+see also:
trailer
film profile], in competition at this year’s Bergamo Film Meeting, is a story of love and social redemption, which attempts to reproduce the invisible but substantial wall between the new castes in Polish society for the viewer, perhaps with a certain amount of intellectualism.
Young Mariusz (Tomasz Schuchardt) wants to turn his life around. His past isn’t exactly that of a law-abiding citizen and he lives in a typical working-class neighbourhood – dirty kitchens and broken lifts – with his mother (Aleksandra Konieczna) who’s depressed, perhaps because of the death of her husband, in a living arrangement built on silence and mutual resentment. By working on the construction of an elegant building in the centre of town, he has scraped together enough money to rent a flat in the same building, with a view over the Arkadia shopping centre. It is there that he meets Agata (Marta Nieradkiewicz), a teenage mother and the daughter of an architect, with whom he sees an opportunity for a peaceful future, tearing down the wall between these two different Polands.
After his short film Journey, which was awarded for its screenplay at the Hartley-Merrill (now Script Pro) competition and the experience of co-writing the screenplay for The Christening [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Marcin Wrona
film profile] by Marcin Wrona with Grzegorz Jankowski and Grazyna Trela, forty-year-old Dariusz Glazer turns the camera on “those we don’t always notice” (his words), to reflect on the lives of each and every one of us. And perhaps he succeeds, keeping the right distance to remain an observer without involving the viewer and bringing them into the story, which would involve them more effectively on an emotional level.
The Wall was produced by Ewa Jastrzebska (Fear of Falling) for Munk Studio with the Polish Filmmakers Association, Polish Film Institute and Telewizja Polska (TVP).
(Translated from Italian)
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