Life Feels Good

Mateusz is diagnosed with cerebral palsy at birth. He cannot speak and cannot control his body. The doctors tell his family: this child is a vegetable, he does not understand. But he does. He hears everything, teaches himself to read, and lives a life inside. Nobody knows. His father talks to him and teaches him things. When his father dies his mother cannot look after him and Mateusz is sent to a care home. It is the same there: nobody asks him a question. He looks for a way; to say anything he needs to find a sign. Maciej Pieprzyca writes and directs. Dawid Ogrodnik plays Mateusz as an adult and Kamil Tkacz as a child; Dorota Kolak and Arkadiusz Jakubik are in the cast. It is a Polish production. Its ground is real; the film rests on the story of a man who lived in Poland. The narrative proceeds through Mateusz's inner voice; the viewer hears what he thinks and the people around him do not. The matter it treats is assumption; nobody tests whether he understands and the decision was made at the start. The film won awards in Poland and Dawid Ogrodnik became known through the part. The narrative does not build the care home as a bad place; nobody is cruel and the system still does not work. The narrative carries humour too; the inner voice is at times sardonic. The ending gives no large victory and what is won is small. Its limit is method; the emotional steering is high and the narrative runs to type. Who it is for: viewers who like Polish cinema and drama drawn from real stories. Who it is not for: it is heavy, the emotional dose high, and the ending sad.