“Strike”

 

Strike

By Cesar Martinez

The Polish film Strike, directed by Volker Schlondorff, was screened before the students of CSP 2 in mid September. The film chronicles the life of Agnieszka Kowalska, a Polish steel worker whose life, replete with melodramatic events, catapults her to become a hero for the Polish workforce after a few fateful happenings. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to write a proper review of the film since we didn’t actually finish watching the movie. I mentioned this to Professors Gasper and Reddy but nothing actually happened. I hope to get to the bottom of this one day, as movies are incredibly important to me and not finishing a movie for unnecessary reasons is somewhat of a sin in my scripture.

Back to the review though. The film Strike opens up with a somewhat confusing scene starring Agnieszka in which she is awarded a television for being the hardest worker in the factory she works at. Being a veteran of this award, Agnieszka is honored, but her co-workers are not surprised. Agnieszka is a top notch employee whose work ethic is appreciated by all around her. Later in the film, we are introduced to her young son and her humble abode, where she later meets the love of her life, a trumpet playing man who seduces Agnieszka with his tall complexion and musical talents. Agnieszka and this man marry, but he soon dies on the beach in a heartbreaking scene replete with influence from French thinkers like Albert Camus and Francois Truffaut. Agnieszka is then alone, trying to provide the most she can for her son. She decides to take a test that will allow her to become a crane operator in the factory, a job mostly reserved for men that pays a higher salary, and is successful in her endeavour.

Agnieszka then inspires some protests in her factory over low wages and workers rights. These protests result in a huge insurrection against the Soviet ruled Polish government that end up as eventual pleas for democratization. Agnieszka is then jailed and sent to prison where she is tortured and beaten by soldiers. The bruises and wounds Agnieszka receives are indicative of the beatings many Polish protestors received.

Suddenly, the film jumps some 20 years in time without reason. Agnieszka’s son is now a soldier and Agnieszka is now frail. She and her son have grown distant, as she is an inspirer for revolutionary dissident. And that is where the film was cut off for us, to my dismay, but now, onto the good part.

This film was stylistically deficient. It had no continuous style and it jumped around without really explaining why. The characters, other than Agnieszka, were fairly two dimensional, and some of their actions weren’t fed with the right kind of developmental motivation as seen in most succesful films. In terms of its stylistic deficiency, the film started off as a screwball comedy, morphed itself into a melodramatic tragedy reminiscent of many Mexican telenovelas, and ended up as a beautifully shot biopic resembling an independent foreign film that may have been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign picture. But it wasn’t. The characters felt flat, the plot developed at a strange pace, and the film jumped time without letting the audience know. Overall, this was not the best film I have seen in my life, but then again, I never finished watching it. Which reminds me, as a journalist, I need to get to the bottom of that.