The Wedding Day (Wesele )

Tragic past hauntingly revisits present in The Wedding Day.
The Wedding Day/Wesele - quite an astonishing work from provocative Polish writer/director Wojciech Smarzowski - powerfully melding tender, raw roots & memories, seemingly forgotten, only to have them tear back into brutal awareness through repeated re-livings - re-experiencing a past in need of, even demanding acknowledgement. A movie that will long remain with you …

The vivisection of the Polish nation, according to Wojtek Smarzowski, hurts more than the vodka pouring on the screen, and the emotional hangover after the screening will not be alleviated by any potion that puts you on your feet. Being a guest at the title party, we get a heavy blow on the head again and again, realizing after each blow that the wedding is in fact a funeral, during which the director mourns contemporary Poland and bends over its shameful past. The latest work of the creator of “Kler” and “Volhynia” is striking by illustrating the scale of human evil, but at the same time it chokes on the excess of threads and bends under the heavy symbolism.