In 1961, Stanislaw Rozewicz created the novella film "Birth Certificate" in cooperation with his brother, Taduesz Rozewicz as screenwriter. Such brother tandems are rare in the history of film but aside from family ties, Stanislaw (born in 1924) and Taduesz (born in 1921) were mutually bound by their love for the cinema. They were born and grew up in Radomsk, a small town which had "its madmen and its saints" and most importanly, the "Kinema" cinema, as Stanislaw recalls: for him cinema is "heaven, the whole world, enchantment". Tadeusz says he considers cinema both a charming market stall and a mysterious temple. "All this savage land has always attracted and fascinated me," he says. "I am devoured by cinema and I devour cinema; I'm a cinema eater." But Taduesz Rozewicz, an eminent writer, admits this unique form of cooperation was a problem to him: "It is the presence of the other person not only in the process of writing, but at its very core, which is inserperable for me from absolute solitude." Some scenes the brothers wrote together; others were created by the writer himself, following discussions with the director. But from the perspective of time, it is "Birth Certificate", rather than "Echo" or "The Wicked Gate", that Taduesz describes as his most intimate film. This is understandable. The tradgey from September 1939 in Poland was for the Rozewicz brothers their personal "birth certificate". When working on the film, the director said "This time it is all about shaking off, getting rid of the psychological burden which the war was for all of us. ... Cooperation with my brother was in this case easier, as we share many war memories. We wanted to show to adult viewers a picture of war as seen by a child. ... In reality, it is the adults who created the real world of massacres. Children beheld the horrors coming back to life, exhumed from underneath the ground, overwhelming the earth."
The principle of composition of "Birth Certificate" is not obvious. When watching a novella film, we tend to think in terms of traditional theatre. We expect that a miniature story will finish with a sharp point; the three film novellas in Rozewicz's work lack this feature. We do not know what will be happen to the boy making his alone through the forest towards the end of "On the Road". We do not know whether in "Letter from the Camp", the help offered by the small heroes to a Soviet prisoner will rescue him from the unknown fate of his compatriots. The fate of the Jewish girl from "Drop of Blood" is also unclear. Will she keep her new impersonation as "Marysia Malinowska"? Or will the Nazis make her into a representative of the "Nordic race"? Those questions were asked by the director for a reason. He preceived war as chaos and perdition, and not as linear history that could be reflected in a plot. Although "Birth Certificate" is saturated with moral content, it does not aim to be a morality play. But with the immense pressure of reality, no varient of fate should be excluded. This approached can be compared wth Krzysztof Kieslowski's "Blind Chance" 25 years later, which pictured dramatic choices of a different era.
The film novella "On the Road" has a very sparing plot, but it drew special attention of the reviewers. The ominating overtone of the war films created by the Polish Film School at that time should be kept in mind. Mainly owing to Wajda, those films dealt with romantic heritage. They were permeated with pathos, bitterness, and irony. Rozewicz is an extraordinary artist. When narrating a story about a boy lost in a war zone, carrying some documents from the regiment office as if they were a treasure, the narrator in "On the Road" discovers rough prose where one should find poetry. And suddenly, the irrational touches this rather tame world. The boy, who until that moment resembled a Polish version of the Good Soldier Schweik, sets off, like Don Quixote, for his first and last battle. A critic described it as "an absurd gesture and someone else could surely use it to criticise the Polish style of dying. ... But the Rozewicz brothers do no accuse: they only compose an elegy for the picturesque peasant-soldier, probably the most important veteran of the Polish war of 1939-1945." "Birth Certificate" is not a lofty statement about national imponderabilia. The film reveals a plebeian perspective which Aleksander Jackieqicz once contrasted with those "lyrical lamentations" inherent in the Kordian tradition. However, a historical overview of Rozewicz's work shows that the distinctive style does not signify a fundamental difference in illustrating the Polish September. Just as the memorable scene from Wajda's "Lotna" was in fact an expression of desperation and distress, the same emotions permeate the final scene of "Birth Certificate". These are not ideological concepts, though once described as such and fervently debated, but rather psychological creations. In this specific case, observes Witold Zalewski, it is not about manifesting knightly pride, but about a gesture of a simple man who does not agree to be enslaved.
The novella "Drop of Blood" is, with Aleksander Ford's "Border Street", one of the first narrations of the fate of the Polish Jews during the Nazi occupation. The story about a girl literally looking for her place on earth has a dramatic dimension. Especially in the age of today's journalistic disputes, often manipulative, lacking in empathy and imbued with bad will, Rozewicz's story from the past shocks with its authenticity. The small herione of the story is the only one who survives a German raid on her family home. Physical survial does not, however, mean a return to normality. Her frightened departure from the rubbish dump that was her hideout lead her to a ruined apartment. Her walk around it is painful because still fresh signs of life are mixed with evidence of annihilation. Help is needed, but Mirka does not know anyone in the outside world. Her subsequent attempts express the state of the fugitive's spirits - from hope and faith, moving to doubt, a sense of oppression, and thickening fear, and finally to despair.
At the same time, the Jewish girl's search for refuge resembles the state of Polish society. The appearance of Mirka results in confusion, and later, trouble. This was already signalled by Rozewicz in an exceptional scene from "Letter from the Camp" in which the boy's neighbour, seeing a fugitive Russian soldier, retreats immediately, admitting that "Now, people worry only about themselves." Such embarassing excuses mask fear. During the occupation, no one feels safe. Neither social status not the aegis of a charity organisation protects against repression. We see the potential guardians of Mirka passing her back and forth among themselves. These are friendly hands but they cannot offer strong support. The story takes place on that thin line between solidarity and heroism. Solidarity arises spontaneously, but only some are capable of heroism. Help for the girl does not always result from compassion; sometimes it is based on past relations and personal ties (a neighbour of the doctor takes in the fugitive for a few days because of past friendship). Rozewicz portrays all of this in a subtle way; even the smallest gesture has significance. Take, for example, the conversation with a stranger on the train: short, as if jotted down on the margin, but so full of tension. And earlier, a peculiar examination of Polishness: the "Holy Father" prayer forced on Mirka by the village boys to check that she is not a Jew. Would not rising to the challenge mean a death sentance?
Viewed after many years, "Birth Certificate" discloses yet another quality that is not present in the works of the Polish School, but is prominent in later B-class war films. This is the picture of everyday life during the war and occupation outlined in the three novellas. It harmonises with the logic of speaking about "life after life". Small heroes of Rozewicz suddenly enter the reality of war, with no experience or scale with which to compare it. For them, the present is a natural extension of and at the same time a complete negation of the past. Consider the sleey small-town marketplace, through which armoured columns will shortly pass. Or meet the German motorcyclists, who look like aliens from outer space - a picture taken from an autopsy because this is how Stanislaw and Taduesz perceived the first Germans they ever met. Note the blurred silhouettes of people against a white wall who are being shot - at first they are shocking, but soon they will probably become a part of the grim landscape. In the city centre stands a prisoner camp on a sodden bog ("People perish likes flies; the bodies are transported during the night"); in the street the childern are running after a coal wagon to collect some precious pieces of fuel. There's a bustle around some food (a boy reproaches his younger brother's actions by singing: "The warrant officer's son is begging in front of the church? I'm going to tell mother!"); and the kitchen, which one evening becomes the proscenium of a real drama. And there are the symbols: a bar of chocolate forced upon a boy by a Wehrmacht soldier ("On the Road"); a pair of shoes belonging to Zbyszek's father which the boy spontaneously gives to a Russian fugitive; a priceless slice of bread, ground under the heel of a policeman in the guter ("Letters from the Camp"). As the director put it: "In every film, I communicate my own vision of the world and of the people. Only then the style follows, the defined way of experiencing things." In Birth Certificate, he adds, his approach was driven by the subject: "I attempted to create not only the texture of the document but also to add some poetic element. I know it is risky but as for the merger of documentation and poety, often hidden very deep, if only it manages to make its way onto the screen, it results in what can referred to as 'art'."
After 1945, there were numerous films created in Europe that dealt with war and children, including "Somewhere in Europe" ("Valahol Europaban", 1947 by Geza Radvanyi), "Shoeshine" ("Sciescia", 1946 by Vittorio de Sica), and "Childhood of Ivan" ("Iwanowo dietstwo" by Andriej Tarkowski). Yet there were fewer than one would expect. Pursuing a subject so imbued with sentimentalism requires stylistic disipline and a special ability to manage child actors. The author of "Birth Certificate" mastered both - and it was not by chance. Stanislaw Rozewicz was always the beneficent spirit of the film milieu; he could unite people around a common goal. He emanated peace and sensitivity, which flowed to his co-workers and pupils. A film, being a group work, necessitates some form of empathy - tuning in with others.
In a biographical documentary about Stanislaw Rozewicz entitled "Walking, Meeting" (1999 by Antoni Krauze), there is a beautiful scene when the director, after a few decades, meets Beata Barszczewska, who plays Mireczka in the novella "Drops of Blood". The woman falls into the arms of the elderly man. They are both moved. He wonders how many years have passed. She answers: "A few years. Not too many." And Rozewicz, with his characteristic smile says: "It is true. We spent this entire time together."
肖像式调度和表演
今晚要点一杯marguerite🥂
#7月纽约点映 看完最大的感想可能就是片中出现的一段引句了吧 新戏从来演旧事 周而复始话沧桑 还有一个词 就是魔幻 导演用了很多虚实之间的拍摄手法让观众一瞥人生如戏的极致感受 尤其是在观察电影当中每一段时间的海报绘画制作的变化时 都会觉得唏嘘不已 艺术到底是什么？是一份穷人的行当 一个表达政治意识的工具 还是一份责任/又或是艺术家的人生使命 每一段时间艺术在中国所具有的特殊含义 感觉导演都以极具张力的方式表达了出来
今时今日，拍近代中国时间跨度超过50年的华语片，看到就赚到。
非常幸运能在大银幕看到这部片子/当中国近代史的洪流穿过邱福的身体 溅出的是一代艺术家的绝唱
僅僅個人觀感。對於形式想法過於飽和的危險是，有點笨重，也很難動人。與其說是鋪陳的電影，不如說是對於美術有些過於沈溺的電影，每一個鏡頭都在絕盡mise en scene其用，不是以恰當的「整體」印象，而是經常過於留戀自己設計的每一個角落。舞台的形式其實是恰當的，也正符合對某些歷史和我們環境的某種「虛構」、不真切的感受，但這種感受不需要電影我們本已太熟悉，以至於電影沒有帶來突破。機位、平移、剪輯的方式（尤其一些drama的正反打）甚至一些木偶式、幽默的表演都讓人想起韋斯安德森。
本想说三段式的结构推进高明有趣，结果看完了觉得大可不必。
本以为同一个故事看第三遍会索然无味 但正是第三段从女性视角讲述同一件事的时候把故事推向了高潮。然而胜利属于男性，却无人在意受伤的女性，明明她才是受害者。电影虽然很长但一直很入戏。朱迪演技绝了，现在就非常想打开Killing Eve看她杀杀人平复一下心情。
1.《罗生门》式的叙事看起来很漂亮。可在这个故事里，既然已经将旗帜插在了女主这边，这种叙事看起来就十分没必要。两位男性都在yy夸大普信，只有女主说得最对，这什么歪理？
法国罗生门，中世纪#MeToo，史诗片下的女性视角。
@Anthology Film Archives 一代人有一代人的伤痕，the play goes on
A new old play 非常不错，拍摄手法和画面都很棒，全剧四川话也让我感觉十分亲切。每一个转折点都是一首判词来揭晓，新又新。很久没看华语片了，很惊喜。唯一觉得不足的是，太长了。
中国特色超现实主义 历史的大幕落下 一个个人生 一个个政党 一个个时代 循环往复 周而复始（今天Anthology空调坏了 所有人都拿着宣传册扇着风看 颇有回到小时候看露天剧院的感觉 很奇妙）
2021年11月28日，Filmgarde. 荒诞不经又天马行空的戏台人生如同画卷一般徐徐展开。一个魔幻现实的故事但是片中人物都讲着蜀中各地方言让人倍感亲切。更难得的是作者拍出了川人的魂儿，嬉笑怒骂豁达人生地过又有坚韧不挠的劲头。喝山菌汤集体飞了和粪坑里捞蛆虫简直让人印象深刻的神来之笔。
非常厉害的电影 一个四川人的史诗 虽然有些角色讲四川话讲得太做作 对其余角色刻画也有点弱 但每个角色都能看到四川人的鲜明特点 苦难时可以阴阳怪气无奈求生存 黄泉路上不忘初心三缺一也要搓麻将 用四川人的乐观来描写近代历史变迁的苦难 搞笑中的悲凉感更甚 时代是新了又新 环境是变了又变 没有带走的都是四川
多有趣，维伦纽瓦拿着未来拍出历史和过去，雷老爷子拿着过去拍出现在和未来。依然可见，有些事情就算过去了一千年一万年，人类的言行亘古不变。
比起戳破强奸犯的谎言，这个片子更精彩的部分是戳破丈夫的谎言。嘲讽拉满，特别悲凉的地方又特别好笑。女主演得太好了！
漫画感-一定要让观众觉得是画出来的，artificiality，handcrafted
制作牛的，很久没看到声音做的这么好的华语电影！！冥界那条线有点被绕晕了（crooky man居然是顾桃演的
PS：被朱迪·科默美到！
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