Potentially and ostensibly wistful, romantic and attractive-looking, Michal Rogalski's "Letnie przesilenie" (meaning "Summer Solstice") is actually a tough enough watch, if one perhaps offering little that is new to Polish filmgoers, unlike those elsewhere in the world who will (should) hopefully be enlightened a bit more as to how wartime Poland looked and lived and operated, while also acquainting themselves with the complex and frank narrative style and attention to detail so typical of the traditional Polish film-making.
Now there is no question that rural Poland during the War was a little different from the cities. Here we have summer 1943 presented (significantly, since this is just after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising but before the main Warsaw Uprising of late summer and early autumn 1944). Nevertheless, the then city life in Poland - with routine presence of Gestapo and SS, and hence endless seizures of ordinary Poles and more or less randomised executions of tens of them per week on the streets - gave every reason for overriding hatred of Germans among Poles.
This is of course to say nothing of the yet-worse things happening in the Jewish Ghettos enforced by the Occupant in all main cities.
In contrast, German forces in the countryside - where the pace of life was obviously a bit slower - were billeted rather than in barracks, and (I have it on good authority that) it was just unrealistic for Germans and Poles in such close proximity to say nothing to one another or interact in no way at all for 4 years! All the more so as not every German in uniform was a raging Nazi.
Indeed, many were basically farm-boys themselves.
Hence, in this film, the Polish woman who comes in to cook for the Occupants does indeed help the very young German soldier Guido (Jonas Ney) to wipe some food off his uniform, while her younger assistant Franka (played by Urszula Bogucka) can't help but fancy him a little, even as - understandably enough - an interest is also being shown in her by young Polish railway worker Romek (Filip Piotrowicz) - whose ascent into a more assertive adulthood is also a topic of the film.
And the three younger people here - on two opposing sides and of two sexes - share an interest in modern jazz and swing music that is in fact the reason for Guido to be in uniform in the first place (he was punished by enlistment for listening to stuff the Nazis classed as "decadent").
Nevertheless, random killings are possible even here, and are in fact participated in by both Germans and Russians. While the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact allowing the two empires to carve up Poland and murder millions of Poles was history by 1943, we are led to believe that partisan Russians were still active in Poland, and might (true to the established tradition) kill resident Poles just as soon as invading Germans.
Uniting all sides here is advantage-taking in regard to the mysterious trains that keep passing through the rural area - in fact transports of Jewish people to camps. Pieces of clothing and other items occasionally drop on to the line, and the Germans use these cynically and more-knowingly, while the Poles do so more out of pressing need - yet they still do so.
Occasionally, a person manages to escape from a train, and that brings us to the haunting portrayal of a desperate escapee called Bunia (played by Maria Semotiuk). She is helped by - and willing to fraternise with - Romek, but is ultimately taken (sadly and typically in every sense of that word) by the Russians, with whom she opts to throw in her lot (she has little choice in the matter, naturally, but clearly sees time spent with such captors as slightly preferable to the alternative of near-certain recapture by the Germans and an awful death).
Ultimately, the brief music-sharing idyll put in place between the male and female Polish leads and the young German goes pear-shaped, and Guido is foolish enough to plead with his unpleasant officer (well-played by Steffen Scheumann) by offering to carry out any order he is given. Typically - and authentically enough - the Oberleutnant chooses to re-establish his authority over the insubordinate Guido by insisting that he shoots the lovely young Polish girl Franka he has been kissing so very few minutes before.
It's an appropriate and all-too-realistic end of any possible touch of innocence between enemies that the Polish countryside might conceivably have allowed for, in a film that - rightly enough - represents the fruits of 21st-century Polish-German cooperation. It's sad (also rightly enough), a bit through-provoking, and indeed made in line with many of the great traditions of more-profound Polish film-making.
And it ought to be watched by far more people in the West than are ever likely to actually see it.
Now there is no question that rural Poland during the War was a little different from the cities. Here we have summer 1943 presented (significantly, since this is just after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising but before the main Warsaw Uprising of late summer and early autumn 1944). Nevertheless, the then city life in Poland - with routine presence of Gestapo and SS, and hence endless seizures of ordinary Poles and more or less randomised executions of tens of them per week on the streets - gave every reason for overriding hatred of Germans among Poles.
This is of course to say nothing of the yet-worse things happening in the Jewish Ghettos enforced by the Occupant in all main cities.
In contrast, German forces in the countryside - where the pace of life was obviously a bit slower - were billeted rather than in barracks, and (I have it on good authority that) it was just unrealistic for Germans and Poles in such close proximity to say nothing to one another or interact in no way at all for 4 years! All the more so as not every German in uniform was a raging Nazi.
Indeed, many were basically farm-boys themselves.
Hence, in this film, the Polish woman who comes in to cook for the Occupants does indeed help the very young German soldier Guido (Jonas Ney) to wipe some food off his uniform, while her younger assistant Franka (played by Urszula Bogucka) can't help but fancy him a little, even as - understandably enough - an interest is also being shown in her by young Polish railway worker Romek (Filip Piotrowicz) - whose ascent into a more assertive adulthood is also a topic of the film.
And the three younger people here - on two opposing sides and of two sexes - share an interest in modern jazz and swing music that is in fact the reason for Guido to be in uniform in the first place (he was punished by enlistment for listening to stuff the Nazis classed as "decadent").
Nevertheless, random killings are possible even here, and are in fact participated in by both Germans and Russians. While the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact allowing the two empires to carve up Poland and murder millions of Poles was history by 1943, we are led to believe that partisan Russians were still active in Poland, and might (true to the established tradition) kill resident Poles just as soon as invading Germans.
Uniting all sides here is advantage-taking in regard to the mysterious trains that keep passing through the rural area - in fact transports of Jewish people to camps. Pieces of clothing and other items occasionally drop on to the line, and the Germans use these cynically and more-knowingly, while the Poles do so more out of pressing need - yet they still do so.
Occasionally, a person manages to escape from a train, and that brings us to the haunting portrayal of a desperate escapee called Bunia (played by Maria Semotiuk). She is helped by - and willing to fraternise with - Romek, but is ultimately taken (sadly and typically in every sense of that word) by the Russians, with whom she opts to throw in her lot (she has little choice in the matter, naturally, but clearly sees time spent with such captors as slightly preferable to the alternative of near-certain recapture by the Germans and an awful death).
Ultimately, the brief music-sharing idyll put in place between the male and female Polish leads and the young German goes pear-shaped, and Guido is foolish enough to plead with his unpleasant officer (well-played by Steffen Scheumann) by offering to carry out any order he is given. Typically - and authentically enough - the Oberleutnant chooses to re-establish his authority over the insubordinate Guido by insisting that he shoots the lovely young Polish girl Franka he has been kissing so very few minutes before.
It's an appropriate and all-too-realistic end of any possible touch of innocence between enemies that the Polish countryside might conceivably have allowed for, in a film that - rightly enough - represents the fruits of 21st-century Polish-German cooperation. It's sad (also rightly enough), a bit through-provoking, and indeed made in line with many of the great traditions of more-profound Polish film-making.
And it ought to be watched by far more people in the West than are ever likely to actually see it.