Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.
If flowers can bloom in a desert, why can't love blossom even in a desolate, war-devastated town in Poland, in 1946. Krzysztof Zanussi poses that question in his beautiful cross-cultural romance, A Year in the Quiet Sun (1984), winner of the Golden Lion at the 1984 Venice Film Festival.
Historical Background: Krzysztof Zanussi was born on July 17th, 1939 in Warsaw, Poland. He studied physics and philosophy at the University of Warsaw but began making amateur films in the late fifties. In 1960, he entered the Lodz film school. His short graduation exercise, The Death of a Provincial (1966), won several awards, internationally, including a prize at the Venice Film Festival. His first feature film, The Structure of Crystals (1969), examined divergent life paths taken by two school friends who each pursue careers in science and won the Best Picture Award from the Polish film critics. He followed with Family Life (1971), Behind the Wall (1971), and Illumination (1973). He made an English language film, entitled Catamount Killing in the United States in 1974. Around this same time, he established two key professional relationships, one with actress Maja Lomorowska and the other with composer Wojciech Kilar. Both collaborations would continue well into the nineties.
During the seventies, the foremost thematic concern in Zanussi's films was the disparities between private and public morality, an issue evident in A Woman's Decision (1977), Camouflage (1977), Spiral (1978), Ways of the Night (1979), and The Constant Factor (1980). Zanussi also made a black comedy in 1980, entitled Contract.
Zanussi was a strong supporter of Solidarity and when that labor movement was temporarily suppressed during the mid-eighties, Zanussi found it advantageous to work outside of Poland. The results were three films made mainly in Germany: Bluebeard (1984), A Year of the Quiet Sun (1984), and The Power of Evil (1985). Zanussi added another five films between 1987 and 1992. The Silent Touch, from 1992, featured Swedish actor Max Von Sydow. Among his more recent films were At Full Gallop (1996), again starring Maja Komorowska, and The Supplement in 2002.
Stylistically, Zanussi favors ideas over emotions. The characters in his film are more likely to be intellectually motivated than passionate. His films are often reflective and tend to be more downbeat than uplifting. Zanussi takes a painterly approach to frame composition. The photography and editing in his films is mostly straight forward, embellished with occasional visual flourishes. Zanussi can be justly reckoned the greatest Polish director between Andrzej Wajda and Krzysztof Kieslowski.
The Story: The story is set in 1946, in a Polish town formerly situated in eastern Germany, in the immediate aftermath of World War II. It is a town in a thoroughly devastated condition. The camera immediately finds Emilia (Maja Komorowska), who is changing the bandage on the leg injury of her mother (Hanna Skarzanka). The mother is so war-weary that her hopes have turned to dying gracefully. Emilia's main remaining joy in life is painting. In the afternoon, she finds an auto wreck a few feet off a roadway where there is a scenic view that she can try to commit to canvas.
Meanwhile and elsewhere, Private First Class Norman (Scott Wilson), an American soldier, opts for a tour of duty in Poland rather than returning to the States. Apparently, he has nothing in particular waiting for him back home. He'll be a driver for the officers involved in some kind of a commission investigating the fate of some American airmen who were downed in eastern Germany. Soon, Norman is driving down a roadway, approaching the Polish town where he has been assigned. He stops to take a leak by the side of the road where there's an old car wreck to provide a bit of a screen. As luck would have it, that wreck is the same one in which Emilia is quietly painting. It's an odd way for a pair to meet, but there you have it. Norman is soon effusively apologizing for invading Emilia's space with his zipper undone. He tries to complement her painting as well. Emilia, however, can only surmise what he might be saying because he speaks only English and she only Polish. Norman tries to offer her a ride back to town, but she's cautious and refuses. When Emilia reaches home on her bicycle, Norman happens to be on her street and learns where she resides.
That residence is a dirty flat in a battered building, where Emilia lives with her mother and next door to a woman named Stella (Ewa Dalkowska), who entertains men for money, in order to survive. Stella had gained some experience at the world's oldest profession while in a concentration camp, where she had survived as a prostitute servicing SS officers. Emilia's mother roundly disapproves, declaring that Stella's head should be shaved. Emilia is more tolerant, realizing that all sorts of compromises were required for survival during the war.
Norman is already smitten with Emilia, even after just a brief encounter, and shows up at her flat with the gift of some paints he's scrounged up. Norman is a gentle, thoughtful kind of fellow and Emilia's mother obliges Emilia to be hospitable. Norman can't communicate verbally with either of the women and is limited to exhibiting his friendliness nonverbally. He does manage to ascertain from the photos sitting about that Emilia and her mother lived in a nice home before the war and that Emilia is a war widow. Both the home and the husband, as Emilia's mother says, are "kaput." Emilia and her mother joke and laugh, a bit, in Polish. Norman begins to court Emilia, politely but earnestly. He brings the pair some much-needed food from the military storeroom – sweet pork stew. Emilia has to look up the words in a dictionary to determine what it is that they're eating.
The next day, a trio of goons suddenly burst into Emilia's flat. They are thieves that prey on helpless widows and old people. They ransack the apartment and torture the old woman to force Emilia to reveal where she keeps the few coins that they've hidden away. When Norman appears an hour or so later, the women are still recovering from the shock and the mess made of their apartment. Three young boys arrive, singing Christmas carols and begging for food. Emilia is so good-hearted that she manages to dig up a few biscuits to give the boys, despite having just been robbed.
Norman still suffers from nightmares and daytime anxieties from having been held captive in a German prison camp. He's a bit freaked out when he encounters a German, Herman (Vadim Glowna), awaiting the services of Stella, in the hallway outside Emilia's flat. Later, Norman and Emilia overhear a spat erupting between Stella and Herman. Herman is about to be repatriated and cannot take Stella with him. Stella demands that he pay up and get lost.
Two of the best scenes of the film involve Norman and Emilia's efforts to enlist translators to facilitate their courtship. Norman tries a military translator, but the lad is scarcely up to the task of translating words of wooing between two lovers, from one language to another. Later, Emilia enlists the aid of her priest, who offers the services of a nun who speaks both Polish and English. The nun, of course, is even less adept at conveying the tone of romantic sentiments.
Norman and Emilia's only hope for a life together entails a risky and difficult plan. It will take years for her to be declared officially a widow in Poland and the authorities wouldn't permit emigration either. She'll have to cross the border illegally with the help of human traffickers. Emilia can't leave her mother behind but the mother is in no condition to walk the eight-mile hike and they've only enough money for one person anyway. The mother is prepared to make the supreme sacrifice, though it's a "gift" that Emilia would not want.
Can love overcome the bleak and desperate conditions in postwar Poland? Can two, lonely, love-struck souls find happiness? There's more than one well-intentioned sacrifice made along the way and a touching surreal ending, but this being a Zanussi message film about the hopeless circumstances that existed in Poland of 1946, one really can't expect a sticky-sweet Hollywood-style ending. A final surreal fantasy segment, set in Monument Valley, is as close to a happy ending as Zanussi will allow. Zanussi had visited that American tourist spot in 1983 along with Andrei Tarkovsky and both directors declared their intentions to someday make a film there (as John Ford had down with Stagecoach). Tarkovsky died before he could fulfill his promise to himself but Zanussi was at least able to shoot a short scene there (with only his wife and the two stars in tow).
Themes: There are levels of traumas from which people can recover and others from which they cannot. Victims of war trauma are damaged goods, in a sense, and sometimes irrevocably so. Poland and other countries devastated by World War II did ultimately recover, but for Poland in particular, it was a forty-year process and certainly not just a few months in 1946. Love, care, and tangible forms of aid can facilitate healing and rehabilitation, but it still takes a lot of time. A Year in the Quiet Sun is about that healing process and the limitations inherent in how quickly it can happen. Emilia asks her priest, "Father, does a person have a right to happiness?" The priest gives the theologically correct answer but Zanussi provides the realistic one. Unfortunately, there are times and places in human society when the answer is "No." If the film has a central message, it's that sometimes people have to count themselves fortunate to be blessed with a single golden moment of happiness in a world mainly pervaded by misery. Yet, despite that pessimistic idea, the film can also be understood as a testament to the ability of the human spirit to persist in difficult times.
Production Values: This is a well-told story, full of poignant detail and tender moments of humor. Zanussi, who both directed and wrote the screenplay, imbued his characters with real complexity and emotional depth. The pace is deliberate, allowing the hopes and fears of the main characters to emerge gradually from their interactions and their participation in events of the story. Viewers never lose sight, in this film, of the time, place, and circumstances in which the story is set. In fact, the story feels more like the story of a time and place than the story of just two individuals.
Cinematographer Slawomir Idziak provided an excellent balance between squalid gray landscapes depicting hopelessness and glimmers of genuine beauty suggestive of hope for renewal. There's a lovely mirror shot with Emilia in the foreground and Norman in the background of the same reflection. There's a gorgeous candlelit moment when the lovers kiss in Emilia's apartment. These touches of beauty keep viewers guessing about whether the ultimate outcome will be happy or tragic. Idziak is an experienced cinematographer, having provided the camerawork for such films as The Double Life of Veronique (1991), Blue (1993) (See Three Colors), and Black Hawk Down (2001). The musical score for this film, by long-time Zanussi associate Wojciech Kilar, is outstanding. He also provided the music for Dracula (1992) and The Pianist (2002).
Despite the fine directing, cinematography and soundtrack, I'd have to say that the performances are the strongest part of the film. Maja Komorowska reminds me very much of Jill Clayburgh, both in appearance and acting style. She has an inner beauty that radiates into her worn and creased face. She's a powerful presence, exuding a gentle warmth and sensitivity. It's small wonder that she's appeared in many of Zanussi's films, such as Contact (1980). Hanna Skarzanka also gets my kudos for her work in the supporting role of Emilia's mother.
Scott Wilson strikes me as a Daniel J. Travanti doppelganger. Wilson is an American actor, born in 1942 in Atlanta, Georgia. He went to Southern Tech University on a basketball scholarship and studied architecture. Wilson quit college, however, and hitchhiked across the country to Los Angeles. One night Wilson got so totally plastered that he and a buddy inadvertently staggered into an acting studio and made asses out of themselves. The next day, Wilson went back to apologize to the teacher and ended up joining the class. After some stage experience, Wilson got his first bit part on the big screen in In the Heat of the Night (1967). He got his first significant role that same year in In Cold Blood (1967). Some of his other appearances were in Dead Man Walking (1995) and Monster (2003).
Bottom-Line: This is a quiet and understated film that nevertheless conveys a powerful romance, fully embedded in its unique time and place in postwar Poland. The characters involved in this love story are thirty-ish, to my eye, and I suspect that romances involving people in their thirties, forties, or still later years hold very little interest for younger audiences. I therefore recommend this film mainly for adults over twenty-five years of age or so. A Year in the Quiet Sun is in English and Polish (with subtitles for the Polish dialog) and has a running time of 109 minutes.
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