The end of the war in May of 1945 brought peace to many. For others, it brought renewed chaos. Acclaimed film and theatre director Wojciech Smarzowski finds much inherent drama in his muscular, at times harrowing film about Poles in Masuria, a land of lakes and forests that was hitherto a region of East Prussia, and therefore Germany. As the Red Army began asserting its authority in an area it had recently liberated, it remained mistrustful of everyone. In their eyes, many Poles had collaborated with the Germans or members of the Polish Home Army, whose goal was the establishment of an independent Polish state. After six long years of torture by the Germans, these Soviet “liberators” were a mixed blessing for many Poles.
Smarzowski’s harrowing tale of survival centres on Rose, a Polish woman, whose husband, a German soldier, was killed in the war, leaving her alone on their farm. A single woman had no defence against Russian soldiers who raped as a form of revenge, nor against plundering Poles who found themselves in desperate straits. The law of the jungle had replaced the rule of law. Help arrives for Rose in the form of Tadeusz, a former officer in the Polish Home Army who survived the Warsaw uprising and is attempting to hide his identity.
Smarzowski pulls no punches in this realistic film about civilians trying to live from day-to-day in a place where guns are still everywhere and murder, rape and robbery are an ever-present reality. Masuria was a region where ordinary people scratched out a living and fended off intruders while wondering when the nightmare would end. As Rose unwinds, we are brought face to face with what war means to women, to the innocent and, more specifically, to postwar Eastern Europe. –TIFF
