The fate of the country and social formation after World War II are the favorite subjects of contemporary Polish directors. They are rarely shown in China, but in fact, European dramas and movies are often involved, and they are not small at all. I still remember taking a drama class at Science Po in the summer of 2012. The teacher was a young (charming Yushu Linfeng with childlike eyes but wearing a wedding ring...TAT) drama director. We studied four script excerpts together in one month. Two Moliere classics, and the other two are postwar stories by Polish writers.
Lighting, soundtrack, dialogue. It's a quiet movie with a quiet little nun and a rambunctious aunt who's a prosecutor. Together, they search for the remains of relatives killed for being Jewish during World War II.
But the story goes way beyond that main line. The two accompanied each other all the way, but their hearts were completely different, and they endured silent contradictions. For the heavy theme of war destroying material and spiritual life, the tone of the director's narrative is moderate, even aesthetic. In the film, what the audience sees is not the brokenness of the old world, but the soft light of the old world left in the brokenness. The lights of the party, the man playing the saxophone, an old-fashioned car, a small bar... The two had basically no conversation before, but there were many silent sparks. "You're a little saint, and I'm a whore," my aunt once said during her long search. Their lives are vastly different, but their souls project each other.
The picture is beautiful. If you press the pause button for each frame, it is a black and white photograph. The whole movie is a beautiful surprise.
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