Roza

Rose - original title - Róża

ROSE
Original title - Róża

Director: Wojciech Smarzowski

Language:
Polish with English subtitles

Runtime: 90 minutes

Producer: Włodzimierz Niderhaus

Principal Cast:
Agata Kulesza, Marcin Dorocinski,
Kinga Preis, Jacek Braciak, Malwina Buss

Screenplay: Michal Szczerbic

Cinematographer: Piotr Sobocinski jr

Music: Mikolaj Trzaska

Wojciech Smarzowski's Róża (Rose) - one of the most eagerly awaited Polish films in recent years. The film received the Critics' Award at last year's National Film Festival in Gdynia, with a citation describing it as, "a moving story which restores the faith in love in the face of adversities and a true portrayal of an important chapter in the history of Central Europe". Rose is set in the district of Mazury (Masuria), located along the former Polish-Prussian border, between 1945-46. After World War II, the region - which had been previously subject to strident Gemanification - is handed over to Poland. Those residents of German roots leave for Germany. If they want to remain, they have to learn Polish and get along with new Polish settlers. In the summer of 1945, Tadeusz Mazur (played by Martin Dorocinski), a former Army soldier who lost everything in the war, arrives in the area. The man comes to a house owned by a woman named Rose (Agata Kulesza). She speaks German and Polish as the widow of a German soldier. Tadeusz learns the dramatic story of the woman's life - she was brutally raped by soldiers and forced into prostitution by the Soviets. Rose is treated with contempt by new settlers in Mazury, who look upon her as a German. An emotional tie flourishes between the soldier and Rose. The film critic of the Gazeta Wyborcza gave Rose the top rating (six stars), while the Rzeczpospolita daily headlines its review of the film - "Rose is great cinema".

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Film RÓŻA Wojciecha Smarzowskiego to jeden z najbardziej oczekiwanych polskich filmów w ostatnich latach. Lato 1945. Tadeusz, były żołnierz AK, któremu wojna zabrała wszystko i niczego nie oszczędziła, włącznie z obecnością przy śmierci żony, zamordowanej przez hitlerowców, wędruje przez Mazury. Odnajduje wdowę po niemieckim żołnierzu, którego śmierci był świadkiem. Miejsce zamieszkania Róży wskazuje mu ewangelicki pastor, uprzedzając jednocześnie, że kobieta niedawno straciła córkę. Mieszkająca sama na dużym gospodarstwie Róża przyjmuje Tadeusza chłodno, pozwala przenocować. Tadeusz odwdzięcza się za gościnę rozminowaniem pola, na którym rosną ziemniaki. Róża, choć się do tego nie przyznaje, potrzebuje czegoś więcej - przede wszystkim ochrony przed szabrownikami i bandami maruderów, którzy nachodzą jej gospodarstwo. Stopniowo Tadeusz poznaje przyczyny jej samotności - kilka miesięcy wcześniej obejście było siedzibą sowieckiego dowództwa, a komendant traktował ją jako swoją nałożnicę. Teraz odwiedzają ją jego podwładni, siłą wymuszając uległość. Po jednej z takich wizyt Róża potrzebuje pomocy lekarza, Tadeusz sprowadza wojskowego doktora z miasteczka. Troskliwie się nią opiekuje, ale kiedy trzeba kobietę umyć, Róża każe mu pójść na strych i wezwać Jadwigę, ukrywającą się tam nastoletnią córkę. Z czasem Tadeusz staje się jednym z domowników, broni obejścia i kobiet przed szabrownikami i maruderami, wrasta w miejscową społeczność, utrzymuje dobre stosunki z autochtonami i polskimi osadnikami. Sąsiednie gospodarstwo zajmują przesiedleńcy zza Buga - sami wyobcowani znajdują w Tadeuszu, ukrywającym swą AK-owską przeszłość, i Róży, traktowanej jak Niemka Mazurce, bratnie dusze. Między Różą i Tadeuszem rodzi się coraz silniejsze poczucie więzi: wygląda na to, że dwoje pokiereszowanych przez wojnę rozbitków odnalazło wreszcie swoje miejsce na ziemi, a początkowo wrogo nastawiona do przybysza Jadwiga akceptuje jego obecność. Stan zdrowia Róży pogarsza się, kobieta potrzebuje kolejnych dawek morfiny. Sytuacji nie poprawiają wiadomości o rychłym wysiedleniu Niemców, przymusowej polonizacji autochtonów, posługujących się na co dzień językiem niemieckim. Co gorsza, podejmowane przez Tadeusza próby uregulowania statusu Róży, noszącej polskie nazwisko, co umoliwiłoby jej zachowanie gospodarstwa, zwracają na niego uwagę miejscowego Urzędu Bezpieczeństwa. Kiedy odrzuca propozycję wstąpienia do bezpieki, życzliwi dotąd funkcjonariusze zaczynają otwarcie traktować go jak wroga

Materiał dystrybutora

Love on the Ruins - Interview with Wojciech Smarzowski

Konrad J. Zarebski: Your previous film Dom zly / The Dark House (2009) can be understood as an attempt to question the image of the Polish People's Republic shown in the films of Stanislaw Bareja, as an expression of the need to restore appropriate balance. Following this trail The Rose (2011) can be interpreted as a challenge to one of the founding myths of the Polish People's Republic: the historic justice of returning the Western and Northern Territories, that is the Regained Territories to the Motherland.

Wojciech Smarzowski: Comparing films is the task of critics; I don't compare these. I didn't make The Dark House out of rebellion against the images of the Polish People's Republic shown in films at the time, nor did I make The Rose against 'founding myths', as you put it.

K.J.Z.: Why did you use a Masurian theme? Until now Polish cinema rarely touched the history of Masuria and the Masurians, even in the tough 1940s. In fact there is only one such film, Waldemar Podgórski's western-style Poludnik zero / Meridian Null with Ryszard Filipski playing the part of a Polish People's Republic army officer, the only just man who defends the indigenous people. The Rose is the first truly insightful take on the history of Masuria, if you don't count a number of short German films, including those made by Schlöndorff and von Trotta. Still, you can find motifs from other films, such as Kazimierz Kutz's Nikt nie wola / Nobody's Calling. Instead of going to Lower Silesia the main character could just as well end up in Masuria, searching for his own place and trying to run away from the trauma of war.

W.S.: I wasn't looking for film references. The western-style motif in Podgórski's film and the situation of Kutz's film character are universal

themes which can be played out in any place and in any era. I landed in Masuria by coincidence. I became interested in a script written by Michal Szczerbic because I read a story I wouldn't have thought of myself; a story from a different world. Besides, I always wanted to make a film about love. This was the time I really immersed myself in the history of the Masurians, a nation which fell victim to two instances of renationalisation and was later destroyed.

K.J.Z.: Is The Rose a historical film or rather a melodrama?

W.S.: The film's basic plot is a story about love - tough and built on ruins. She is a Masurian, German, Polish perhaps. The term is relative and depends on political manipulation, which was particularly severe at that time. Nonetheless, above all she is a woman who suffered from the Russians and later from the Poles; who experienced tragedy and the worst of humiliations. She is a Pole whose life was ruined by Russians and Germans, by war and occupation. She is a human wreck. A ghost. They become connected through a biological impulse of survival, but it soon turns out that their mutual closeness makes it possible for them to be reborn. They are mutilated. You don't see hope or prospects for the future. This is why initially it looks more as a chance to live than to love. Love comes last, at the very last moment.

K.J.Z.: Yet it is the historical background which makes the story so moving

W.S.: Despite the drastic nature of the events which influence the fate of the characters, the historical layer of this story serves only as a background. The film's plot takes place in the old Polish-Prussian borderlands, on a territory given to Poland after the Second World War,

at the end of 1945 and beginning of 1946. The plot is framed by the four
seasons: summer is scorched, autumn foretells death, winter is hibernation, and spring brings hope. Other events which took place between 1939 and 1956 - an epoch in which History totally crushed the fates of people, nations and states - are also mirrored in the film.

K.J.Z.: Do you see the fate of the Masurians as a synecdoche of the fate of Poles after 1945?

W.S.: No. This is a story about two shipwrecked individuals who found each other at the end of the turmoil of war. The story about Masurians, a nation which fell victim to two nationalisms and was later destroyed, takes place as if in passing. Who were the Masurians in mid-20th century, what sets them apart? Polish origins, German education, Slavonic customs, German tradition, Polish surnames, German first names, Polish language, German writing, Slavonic religiousness, evangelical faith, political neutrality All this is mentioned in our film. I would like Rose to be a commentary on how national, cultural, religious and ethnic minorities' differences are perceived and accepted.

K.J.Z.: You could notice a discussion about rape as wartime weapon in the Polish press after the film A Woman in Berlin what the reality was, why Russians raped, where they were allowed to do it, and where rape was punished by death. There was a time when a director's refusal to delete a rape scene from his film (and the novel's author to erase it from his book), blocked The Tin Drum, Günter Grass's book and Volker Schlöndorff's film, for twenty years. In your film rape is shown with naturalist brutality every five or fifteen minutes. Is your film's audience ready for this?

W.S.: These are different times. It's not that a viewer deprived of monstrosities for breakfast has poor

digestion all day, but the cinema has radically shifted the borders between realism and naturalism. I like to provoke, nonetheless I also hope that, apart from a few hard scenes, the audience will find a lot of different emotions in Rose. That aside from sensing horror and shock they will be moved. The Rose, let me say it again, is a film about love. About love on the ruins. Love in an inhuman era.

K.J.Z.: How did working with actors look like? I am thinking particularly about the part played by Agata Kulesza.

W.S.: I always work in a similar way with actors. It is important to analyse the text, the characters and their motivations. Hundreds of questions are asked to be able to name the emotions and states felt by a character in a given moment, in a given scene. After that my role on the set boils down to controlling the previous arrangements or appropriately reacting to changes, all done to navigate the actors through the story. You have to remember that the story was written in a strict, simple style, I mean this in the best sense. It had to be filmed in the same way; by subtracting rather than by adding, by concentrating on the actors, on the emotions. These were the guidelines: actors should play realistically and organically. From the belly, so it would hurt and move. And since I work with exceptional actors, there are times when you can watch brilliant performances.

Interview by Konrad J. Zarebski
Translated by: Helena Chmielewska-Szlajfer
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