FILM PICK OF THE WEEK
This epic Polish film is a beautiful, slow-burn that takes its time to tell a complex story of love, betrayal, loss and redemption.
Set in Poland between the two world wars, it is adapted from the novel Znachor by Tadeusz Dołęga-Mostowicz and opens in Warsaw in 1920 with respected surgeon and professor Rafal Wilczur (Leszek Lichota) gaining recognition for his pioneering work, especially in neurosurgery.
Wilczur is quiet, dignified and modest, while his younger, ambitious colleague Jerzy Dobraniecki (Miroslaw Haniszewski) is happy to do the public facing promotion of their work. However, it turns out that Dobraniecki resents Wilczur’s fame and acclaim.
Wilczur’s professional life may be successful but his home life is turned upside down when he is abandoned by his unhappy wife who leaves him for another man and takes their infant daughter Maria with her.
Wilczur is heartbroken and after a night of heavy drinking, he goes to try and find his wife in a suburb of Warsaw where she used to live with her aunt. While he is there he is mugged and beaten violently – an attack witnessed by his jealous colleague Dobraniecki, who fails to help him or to inform the police. He leaves Wilczur for dead and when only his coat is found, it is assumed that Wilzcur has perished in the river.
In fact, he is very much alive and has lost all memory of his past life. The action then moves forward 15 years by which time his daughter Maria (Maria Kowalska) is a grown woman. Her mother and stepfather have died and she is forced to make her own way in the world. By coincidence she ends up in the same small town as Wilczur who now has a different name and since losing his memory has been travelling around as an itinerant farm worker. When called upon, he also looks after people’s medical needs, in some cases saving people’s lives, although he has no memory of whether he is qualified or not. And it is a risky business as ‘quackery’ is illegal and he could end up in jail.
As Maria secures a job as a waitress in a local tavern and catches the eye of a young count, her father takes on a job in a nearby flour mill run by a local woman who takes him into her heart and home. Then gradually, delicately, the narrative moves towards the estranged father and daughter’s paths crossing.