Polish thriller’s a drama for our time
with a chip on his shoulder that could feed a family for a week, and a gaping void where his conscience should be.
Tomasz grew up in rural impoverishment, but a benevolent and achingly liberal local family have been sponsoring his studies at law school.
And now Tomasz has messed his own nest by being caught plagiarising an essay.
Out of options and short of zlotys, Tomasz blags his way into a job with a PR company of such surpassing sleaziness that even the other PR companies won’t deal with them. No surprises then that the idealistic young councillor’s opponents have taken on Tomasz’s new employers to somehow destroy the reputation of their foe.
The Hater is a film about – as everything seems to be in 2020 – the eternal battle between the cynics and the idealists. Although which side you decide is which is entirely up to you. Here, the naked ambition and opportunism of the anti-immigrant mob is hardly less loathsome than the casual cruelty and appalling snobbery of the woker-thanthou liberal set.
So far, so fun, as The Hater plays out like a slightly more credible take on the political battles that the great Black Mirror (also on Netflix) episode The Waldo Moment had such fun with a few years ago.
But, The Hater takes on a far darker hue as Tomasz’s obsession with his benefactor’s daughter is thwarted, and he turns his anger and dubious talents against the family. Murder and mayhem ensue.
The Hater contains at least enough character and plot to sustain a three- or four-part series. As a two-and-a-quarter hour movie, it feels overly long at times, and often far too compressed.
The range of issues, political and personal, it tries to address is occasionally overwhelming, and a late sequence of a shooting inside a vaulted, marble public space was distressing to sit through. Some viewers will find the sequence tasteless and exploitative.
And yet, for all its flaws, inconsistencies and credulity-stretching contrivances, I was mostly engrossed with The Hater from beginning to end.
An English language remake, perhaps as a short series, might not even be a bad thing.
As a zeitgeisty discussion piece on online manipulation – Tomasz does nothing that a Russian troll farm hasn’t already accomplished – and the dangers that social media poses to our democratic process and freedom of expression and thought, The Hater is about the best I’ve seen so far.
Director Jan Komasa’s 2019 Corpus Christi has been knocking them dead at this year’s New Zealand International Film Festival.
To see his follow-up movie debut on Netflix before that festival has even finished surely says something about the perils of film distribution in an online world. I’m just not sure exactly what.