Premiering on the recent festival circuit is a Polish-British co-production that caught my eye—directed by Kasia Adamik and starring Lesley Manville, Winter of the Crow seemed at first glance to be an interesting new perspective on something usually only obliquely discussed outside Poland itself, but does it live up to that?
Manville plays a somewhat uptight psychology academic who decides to visit Warsaw on a conference in 1981, with Cold War tensions remaining as they often did an omnipresent backdrop. Winter weather and carelessness with airport baggage prove one thing before she gets interrupted by student protests, taking out her chagrin on the young activist who invited her (Zofia Wichłacz). Of course, all of this proves rather minor as the ruling party kicks off the martial law that dominated much of this period in Poland, which was how the regime interpreted the spirit of socialism in response to trade union protests against mismanagement (the last lines of Animal Farm ringing very much true in this time).
For a film with a low budget, it does a good job of creating a sense of tension as Manville does her best to survive—not being a special agent, not even being someone all that physical, all she has are her wits, with the language barrier proving as much a problem as anything. There is some distracting CGI involved, with the greyness and presence of Khrushchev blocks being overdone a bit—but there are moments very much true of the era there as many I know can attest, like the buying of live carp to keep in the bath. Yes, that was indeed a thing—I mean, if you really really want fresh fish, how else are you going to do it?
Either way, the performances are generally solid, and there is the omnipresent tension of who to trust here—though in fact you might find yourself wanting to see more of the secondary characters, who have much more at stake than our lead and are often a hair away from being arrested or executed.
Check it out if you can—while a bit rough around the edges at times it’s interesting enough. I suggest in this vein also Andrzej Wajda’s Man of Iron, a film actually made in this period, about the Polish upheavals and the responses to them. In a world with ever bolder encroaching corruption, there remains much to take from either…
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