New Polish comedy "Podlasie" sparks criticism from Belarusians of Podlasie

A scene from the film. Photo: filmweb.pl

The film "Podlasie" (dir. Łukasz Kośmicki) was released on Netflix before Catholic Easter, on April 1st. Its creators present it as a "warm comedy" about family values. However, watching this film evoked entirely different thoughts in Paulina and Wojciech Siegienia (Wojciech is a councilor of the Dubicze Cerkiewne commune, Paulina is a journalist and writer). They shared their thoughts in the pages of "Krytyka Polityczna".

The director created a work that exploits the ancient Polish topos of a "paradise place" (locus amoenus) — a mythical land of harmony and happiness, write the Siegienia.

"The viewer is introduced to a friendly community whose daily life is organized around work and the church. The plot is driven by a sudden hostile intervention from the outside world, which begins to threaten the heroes (the main character took out microloans to buy bitcoins and cannot repay them). The heroes show solidarity and, acting amidst the beautiful nature and cultural landscape of Podlasie, overcome life's difficulties, restoring the local status quo," the authors briefly summarize the film's content and remark:

"The plot, flat as the Masovian plain, and stale jokes result in the film being a painfully banal story about aboriginals who speak with a strange accent and use archaic words. Despite the screenwriters' efforts, beneath the poor frames of this naive world, its opposite is revealed — locus horridus — a world of chaos, fear, death.

It's not even about the fact that the local community's colorfulness is embodied by two minor alcoholic characters who awkwardly hide their addiction from their wives. Apparently, this was the screenwriters' idea — to play on the stereotype that everyone in the east distills moonshine and drinks. The plot breaks free from the authors' control and begins to live its own life — a wildly brutal one."

Павялічыць

Photo: filmpolski.pl

The authors particularly sharply criticize the fictional explanation of the history of the ruins of St. Anthony's Church in Jałówka (Michałowo commune), located a kilometer from the border with Belarus. In the film, the destruction of the sanctuary is explained as an accident: a priest supposedly unintentionally burned down the church while distilling moonshine. The Siegienia remind that these ruins are witnesses to a real tragedy:

"These ruins are a testament to the real misfortune that unfolded in this town. The church was burned during the war and never rebuilt. The synagogue was also burned there at that time. The real horror that hangs over the real Podlasie is the history of pogroms, the Holocaust, during which Jews perished, and the post-war ethnic cleansing that took place in the idyllic settings of the villages shown in the film.

And it is in those moments when objects from the background of the frame begin to speak with their own voice that the film replaces the mythical world of happiness with the real world of death."

And where are the Belarusians? There are no Belarusians

In their review of the film, Paulina and Wojciech Siegienia raise a broader issue of the deliberate "erasure of traces" of Belarusians and Orthodoxy in Podlasie.

In their opinion, this film should be juxtaposed with the essay-book by Aneta Prymaka-Oniszk, a Belarusian from Podlasie, "Stones Had to Fly. The Erased History of Podlasie." In her work, the writer built an epic reportage about the Polish-Belarusian borderland and what is commonly called "the fate of a minority" around the case of her grandfather's murder in 1945.

"An eye familiar with the local landscape notices a shot of a Catholic priest addressing the faithful in the middle of a village, but doing so next to crosses with the characteristic slanted crossbar of Orthodoxy and inscriptions in Cyrillic. It notices a traditional embroidered towel in the corner of a village house, but the shot is framed so that the icon that this towel adorns is not visible.

Павялічыць

Photo: filmpolski.pl

The Podlasie eye catches frames of the Orthodox chapel in Pietraszki, filmed so that trees obscure the Orthodox dome. It sees the cobblestones and houses in villages that in reality are not even multicultural, but simply Orthodox, where Catholics (excluding newcomers) are a rarity. Because the region southeast of Białystok, between Bielsk and Hajnówka, is the very heart of Orthodox Podlasie," the authors write.

The criticism also touches on the linguistic question. The authors write in this regard about "the triumph of the simulacrum over reality." Everything sounds as if the only language consultant for the film's creators was the Białystok blogger Kolorok — "the most famous Instagram promoter of the fictional 'Podlasie language,' who, from self-mockery and ignorance (which can generally be called a marketing strategy based on self-orientalism), created a regional product."

"And it's pointless to explain to Kolorok and the screenwriters that the people in the villages used in the film speak a Podlasie variant of the Belarusian language among themselves. And if they sometimes speak Polish, they use forms like 'ja mówił' (I spoke), where the grammar remains Belarusian," the Siegienia argue.

Another significant point the authors draw attention to is the characters' surnames — Madej or Wolak — which are atypical for Podlasie. Such surnames are not found there.

"This is no accident," write the Siegienia. "The goal was not to show this part of Podlasie as it is. The goal was to seize it, to carry out a cultural hostile takeover, to use the attractive cultural landscape, the imagined locus amoenus, and to fit it into the familiar framework of the Polish imagination.

But if there are no locals in this picture, then what about them? Where did they go? Why are strangers living in their houses? What happened here? These questions rightly send shivers down one's spine, and exhaustive answers to them can be found in Aneta Prymaka-Oniszk's books," write the Siegienia.

Павялічыць

Photo: filmpolski.pl

"Poles like the eastern note, but don't like the people who created it"

As the authors emphasize, the cultural landscape in which "Podlasie" is set was certainly not created by Madejs and Wolaks. "It was created by people of Ruthenian (in the sense of Rus' — Belarus and Ukraine, not Russia) origin, the autochthonous inhabitants of these territories, who, in the era of maturing national and political consciousness, identified themselves as Belarusians.

In the Polish cultural imagination, as seen in the example of the film, there is no place for them," write Paulina and Wojciech Siegienia. "Podlasie Belarusians could exclaim, like Black Americans when they talk about the blues: the Polish majority likes the eastern note, but doesn't like the people who created it."

The authors bitterly state that the process of erasing consciousness is accompanied by a practice of self-erasure, where local residents choose a safe, but indistinct "local identity." The Siegienia grimly observe: no matter how patriotic Poland's Orthodox residents portray themselves, "these Orthodox cousins will still be cut out of the family Polish photo."

"There is no place for Ivanyuks, Dzmitruks, and Parfianyuks. In the collective portrait, even if a wooden Podlasie house serves as the background, and shirts with Belarusian folk ornaments are the costumes, there will only be enough room for Madejs, Wolaks, and the kindly priest."

The authors call the film "Podlasie" an orientalist hack job.

"This is a region that entices with the exoticism of village houses, but at the same time makes one laugh with its backwardness. The amusing and gentle Podlasie, populated by figures of noble savages, has become a convenient backdrop for the projection of Kresy mythology," the Siegienia argue, urging local residents to reflect.

Павялічыць

Photo: filmpolski.pl

"Doesn't this contribute to the art of mimicry, constant understatement, confusion in discussions about identity, which increasingly lead to regression — a departure from national self-awareness with its political consequences to pre-modern identifications, where only 'we are locals' and 'our language' remain?"

This inability, or perhaps unwillingness, to speak about themselves in terms of a nation or at least an ethnic group prevents them from building a confident position as hosts who could speak without complexes about themselves and their piece of land

with their Polish (and Catholic) fellow citizens. Instead of leading them into the swamps," the Siegienia conclude.

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