The Wedding

A film set in a Polish village. The year is 1900. A poet from Kraków marries a peasant girl. The wedding is held in the village. Artists come from the city and are in the same room as the peasants. The two groups do not know each other. The city people love peasantry as an idea; the peasants notice. From there the film lasts one night. A house, a few rooms, and a dance that never stops turning. The camera does not stop either. The narrative moves from room to room and conversations are cut off halfway. As the night goes on the drink rises. The talk turns to politics. Poland at that time is partitioned and not independent. Everyone talks about it and nobody does anything. Then the ghosts come. A figure appears before each guest. Some from history, some from their own conscience. The narrative builds them as real. It does not separate who is real and who is not. What the narrative is interested in is not a wedding but paralysis: its idea is that a nation can do nothing but talk about its own liberation, and that the talking is itself a narcotic. Toward the end a call arrives. A messenger says he will bring weapons and everyone waits. The last scene is that waiting. Nobody comes and the crowd goes on dancing. The source is Stanisław Wyspiański's play, one of the most staged texts in Polish theatre. The whole text is in verse and the film keeps it. The images are dark and crowded. The frame is always full; there is always someone behind. Andrzej Wajda made this at a time of tight censorship in Poland and the political reading of the text looks at his period as well. Marek Walczewski, Izabela Olszewska, Ewa Ziętek and Daniel Olbrychski are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes Polish cinema and adaptations from the theatre. Who it is not for: anyone without the context; the narrative refers constantly to Polish history and explains none of it.