One of three Polish films nominated in categories at this year’s
upcoming Oscars (the others are Tomasz Śliwiński's Our Curse and –
of course! – Pawel Pawlikowski’s Ida), Aneta Kopacz’s
Joanna is about as delicate and as discreet as documentaries
come. What’s remarkable about the movie is that this delicacy and discretion is
achieved in spite of the film’s charged and emotive subject matter, which is
nothing less than the premature ending of a life.
Joanna Sałyga was a 30-something wife and mother diagnosed
with cancer, who documented her experiences in blog posts (and, later, a book)
that took the form of addresses to her 5-year-old son, Janek. Those unfamiliar
with Joanna’s story won’t find it neatly summarised in the documentary, though.
Rather, Kopacz’s film approaches its subject more obliquely, eschewing
introductions or explanatory information to gently deposit us instead within
the day-to-day domestic routines of its protagonists. As we see Joanna and her
family on woodland walks, engaged in cooking, or playing with Lego, a sense of
everyday normalcy is established. This makes the gradual realisation of what
Joanna is going through - which we’re first tipped off to in fleeting
references to pain and medication and then a brief glimpse of an Oncology and
Chemotherapy ward - all the more devastating.
The movie features a number of intimate scenes
between Joanna and her husband Piotr; one of these starts out wryly (with
Joanna suggesting that she hold an audition for Piotr’s next wife on her blog)
before turning wrenching, an example of Kopacz’s sensitivity and rigour in
modulating the movie’s challenging shifts of tone. However, the film’s primary
focus is on Joanna’s relationship with Janek, an open-hearted mother/son bond that’s
characterised in equal parts by easy-going playfulness, sharp challenge and
tenderness. As Joanna reads Janek her
writings, which take the form of observations and advice, the viewer might be
reminded of Bruce Joel Rubin’s underrated My Life (1993), in
which Michael Keaton played a dying father recording video messages for his
as-yet-unborn son.
Yet Kopacz’s film goes deeper than Rubin’s
managed, ultimately. Ever so gently, her movie gestures towards larger
existential questions, not only of life and death, but also of identity and
understanding. It opens, after all, with Janek responding to his mother’s enquiry
“Why would you like me to write about you?” with the rejoinder “Because I want
to know what I’m like.” (To which Joanna’s characteristically questioning
response is: “If I describe you, will you then know what you’re like?”). How we
know others and how we experience the world are concerns of the movie, and I’m
hard-pressed to think of a recent film that’s conveyed with more perspicacity
what a child intuits and what remains beyond the scope of his comprehension. Curious
and a bit precocious, Janek’s questions to his mother veer from the
delightfully surreal (“Can little Dalmatians drink milk from a cow?” he wonders
at one point) to the raspingly poignant. We know that the boy is just starting the
painful process of understanding his mother’s imminent passing when he asks
her: “What do you dislike about our house so much that you want to move
out?”
Shot by the talented Łukasz Żal (co-lenser of
Ida) Joanna is attentive to atmosphere,
its ambient moments, nature shots and haptic imagery sometimes enhanced by Jan A.P. Kaczmarek’s subtle score. Joanna’s
main advice to Janek is to “pay attention” to the texture of everyday experience,
to “what … you feel when you eat your favourite pizza, when you cuddle a cat, or
when you just rest your head on the pillow.” The movie appears to have taken
its own cues from such counsel. Quiet and watchful, "tactful" in more ways than one, the film doesn’t force
things and, remarkably, it never feels like it's invading privacy, either. “I’m
not making a movie about dying, I’m making a movie about life,” Kopacz has remarked. And in the 45 minutes of this modest yet profoundly resonant film she has indeed achieved precisely that.
You can watch a Q&A from Polish Filmmakers NYC: "New Voices, Ancient Echoes" screening of Joanna here.
How wonderful that you've taken the time to write such a thoughtful review of a short film! So often, shorts are spoken of so briefly as to almost be disrespectful, but your writing here is a fine testament to a beautiful film. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteMany thanks for the kind comment. You're right that shorts often don't get their due. It was a pleasure to write about JOANNA.
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