In 1961, Stanislaw Rozewicz created the novella film "Birth Certificate" in cooperation with his brother, Taduesz Rozewicz as screenwriter. Such brother tandems are rare in the history of film but aside from family ties, Stanislaw (born in 1924) and Taduesz (born in 1921) were mutually bound by their love for the cinema. They were born and grew up in Radomsk, a small town which had "its madmen and its saints" and most importanly, the "Kinema" cinema, as Stanislaw recalls: for him cinema is "heaven, the whole world, enchantment". Tadeusz says he considers cinema both a charming market stall and a mysterious temple. "All this savage land has always attracted and fascinated me," he says. "I am devoured by cinema and I devour cinema; I'm a cinema eater." But Taduesz Rozewicz, an eminent writer, admits this unique form of cooperation was a problem to him: "It is the presence of the other person not only in the process of writing, but at its very core, which is inserperable for me from absolute solitude." Some scenes the brothers wrote together; others were created by the writer himself, following discussions with the director. But from the perspective of time, it is "Birth Certificate", rather than "Echo" or "The Wicked Gate", that Taduesz describes as his most intimate film. This is understandable. The tradgey from September 1939 in Poland was for the Rozewicz brothers their personal "birth certificate". When working on the film, the director said "This time it is all about shaking off, getting rid of the psychological burden which the war was for all of us. ... Cooperation with my brother was in this case easier, as we share many war memories. We wanted to show to adult viewers a picture of war as seen by a child. ... In reality, it is the adults who created the real world of massacres. Children beheld the horrors coming back to life, exhumed from underneath the ground, overwhelming the earth."
The principle of composition of "Birth Certificate" is not obvious. When watching a novella film, we tend to think in terms of traditional theatre. We expect that a miniature story will finish with a sharp point; the three film novellas in Rozewicz's work lack this feature. We do not know what will be happen to the boy making his alone through the forest towards the end of "On the Road". We do not know whether in "Letter from the Camp", the help offered by the small heroes to a Soviet prisoner will rescue him from the unknown fate of his compatriots. The fate of the Jewish girl from "Drop of Blood" is also unclear. Will she keep her new impersonation as "Marysia Malinowska"? Or will the Nazis make her into a representative of the "Nordic race"? Those questions were asked by the director for a reason. He preceived war as chaos and perdition, and not as linear history that could be reflected in a plot. Although "Birth Certificate" is saturated with moral content, it does not aim to be a morality play. But with the immense pressure of reality, no varient of fate should be excluded. This approached can be compared wth Krzysztof Kieslowski's "Blind Chance" 25 years later, which pictured dramatic choices of a different era.
The film novella "On the Road" has a very sparing plot, but it drew special attention of the reviewers. The ominating overtone of the war films created by the Polish Film School at that time should be kept in mind. Mainly owing to Wajda, those films dealt with romantic heritage. They were permeated with pathos, bitterness, and irony. Rozewicz is an extraordinary artist. When narrating a story about a boy lost in a war zone, carrying some documents from the regiment office as if they were a treasure, the narrator in "On the Road" discovers rough prose where one should find poetry. And suddenly, the irrational touches this rather tame world. The boy, who until that moment resembled a Polish version of the Good Soldier Schweik, sets off, like Don Quixote, for his first and last battle. A critic described it as "an absurd gesture and someone else could surely use it to criticise the Polish style of dying. ... But the Rozewicz brothers do no accuse: they only compose an elegy for the picturesque peasant-soldier, probably the most important veteran of the Polish war of 1939-1945." "Birth Certificate" is not a lofty statement about national imponderabilia. The film reveals a plebeian perspective which Aleksander Jackieqicz once contrasted with those "lyrical lamentations" inherent in the Kordian tradition. However, a historical overview of Rozewicz's work shows that the distinctive style does not signify a fundamental difference in illustrating the Polish September. Just as the memorable scene from Wajda's "Lotna" was in fact an expression of desperation and distress, the same emotions permeate the final scene of "Birth Certificate". These are not ideological concepts, though once described as such and fervently debated, but rather psychological creations. In this specific case, observes Witold Zalewski, it is not about manifesting knightly pride, but about a gesture of a simple man who does not agree to be enslaved.
The novella "Drop of Blood" is, with Aleksander Ford's "Border Street", one of the first narrations of the fate of the Polish Jews during the Nazi occupation. The story about a girl literally looking for her place on earth has a dramatic dimension. Especially in the age of today's journalistic disputes, often manipulative, lacking in empathy and imbued with bad will, Rozewicz's story from the past shocks with its authenticity. The small herione of the story is the only one who survives a German raid on her family home. Physical survial does not, however, mean a return to normality. Her frightened departure from the rubbish dump that was her hideout lead her to a ruined apartment. Her walk around it is painful because still fresh signs of life are mixed with evidence of annihilation. Help is needed, but Mirka does not know anyone in the outside world. Her subsequent attempts express the state of the fugitive's spirits - from hope and faith, moving to doubt, a sense of oppression, and thickening fear, and finally to despair.
At the same time, the Jewish girl's search for refuge resembles the state of Polish society. The appearance of Mirka results in confusion, and later, trouble. This was already signalled by Rozewicz in an exceptional scene from "Letter from the Camp" in which the boy's neighbour, seeing a fugitive Russian soldier, retreats immediately, admitting that "Now, people worry only about themselves." Such embarassing excuses mask fear. During the occupation, no one feels safe. Neither social status not the aegis of a charity organisation protects against repression. We see the potential guardians of Mirka passing her back and forth among themselves. These are friendly hands but they cannot offer strong support. The story takes place on that thin line between solidarity and heroism. Solidarity arises spontaneously, but only some are capable of heroism. Help for the girl does not always result from compassion; sometimes it is based on past relations and personal ties (a neighbour of the doctor takes in the fugitive for a few days because of past friendship). Rozewicz portrays all of this in a subtle way; even the smallest gesture has significance. Take, for example, the conversation with a stranger on the train: short, as if jotted down on the margin, but so full of tension. And earlier, a peculiar examination of Polishness: the "Holy Father" prayer forced on Mirka by the village boys to check that she is not a Jew. Would not rising to the challenge mean a death sentance?
Viewed after many years, "Birth Certificate" discloses yet another quality that is not present in the works of the Polish School, but is prominent in later B-class war films. This is the picture of everyday life during the war and occupation outlined in the three novellas. It harmonises with the logic of speaking about "life after life". Small heroes of Rozewicz suddenly enter the reality of war, with no experience or scale with which to compare it. For them, the present is a natural extension of and at the same time a complete negation of the past. Consider the sleey small-town marketplace, through which armoured columns will shortly pass. Or meet the German motorcyclists, who look like aliens from outer space - a picture taken from an autopsy because this is how Stanislaw and Taduesz perceived the first Germans they ever met. Note the blurred silhouettes of people against a white wall who are being shot - at first they are shocking, but soon they will probably become a part of the grim landscape. In the city centre stands a prisoner camp on a sodden bog ("People perish likes flies; the bodies are transported during the night"); in the street the childern are running after a coal wagon to collect some precious pieces of fuel. There's a bustle around some food (a boy reproaches his younger brother's actions by singing: "The warrant officer's son is begging in front of the church? I'm going to tell mother!"); and the kitchen, which one evening becomes the proscenium of a real drama. And there are the symbols: a bar of chocolate forced upon a boy by a Wehrmacht soldier ("On the Road"); a pair of shoes belonging to Zbyszek's father which the boy spontaneously gives to a Russian fugitive; a priceless slice of bread, ground under the heel of a policeman in the guter ("Letters from the Camp"). As the director put it: "In every film, I communicate my own vision of the world and of the people. Only then the style follows, the defined way of experiencing things." In Birth Certificate, he adds, his approach was driven by the subject: "I attempted to create not only the texture of the document but also to add some poetic element. I know it is risky but as for the merger of documentation and poety, often hidden very deep, if only it manages to make its way onto the screen, it results in what can referred to as 'art'."
After 1945, there were numerous films created in Europe that dealt with war and children, including "Somewhere in Europe" ("Valahol Europaban", 1947 by Geza Radvanyi), "Shoeshine" ("Sciescia", 1946 by Vittorio de Sica), and "Childhood of Ivan" ("Iwanowo dietstwo" by Andriej Tarkowski). Yet there were fewer than one would expect. Pursuing a subject so imbued with sentimentalism requires stylistic disipline and a special ability to manage child actors. The author of "Birth Certificate" mastered both - and it was not by chance. Stanislaw Rozewicz was always the beneficent spirit of the film milieu; he could unite people around a common goal. He emanated peace and sensitivity, which flowed to his co-workers and pupils. A film, being a group work, necessitates some form of empathy - tuning in with others.
In a biographical documentary about Stanislaw Rozewicz entitled "Walking, Meeting" (1999 by Antoni Krauze), there is a beautiful scene when the director, after a few decades, meets Beata Barszczewska, who plays Mireczka in the novella "Drops of Blood". The woman falls into the arms of the elderly man. They are both moved. He wonders how many years have passed. She answers: "A few years. Not too many." And Rozewicz, with his characteristic smile says: "It is true. We spent this entire time together."
前面铺垫那么多，最后就这么算了？
女主太惨了，什么都没做错却得到一个家破人亡的结局，作家妻女的死明明是他老婆有精神病导致的，他却把账算在女主头上，女主被折磨这么久也不想着反击，明面搞不过不会来个同归于尽吗
这是一部从任何角度看都非常“随意”的作品，没有明确的故事线、没有明确的人物关系（有人甚至看完都搞不清男主和女主到底兄妹还是夫妻）、没有具象的归纳总结……导演通过旁观视角，让观众自行领悟人物的行为动机和内在逻辑。
作为悬疑片有点过于平铺直叙了，悬疑点设计地不错(有原著加持？），但拍得不够抓人。
這個導演的所有片子都給人一種不會講話所以乾脆不講了的感覺，整個片子用一句歌詞就能概括：“standing on the beach with the gun in my hand, staring at the sea, staring at the sand”不知道是局外人還以為cure的粉絲隨便拍了個電影😰
縱使喜歡這片的影像以及調度，那故意欺騙的劇情一開始還算有趣，第二次就有點無言了。
不好意思我没看懂…反转在哪？为什么看豆瓣点评我觉得我跟你们看的不是一部片…除了虚无，好像也没啥主题
75 minutes of Tim Roth just vibing...
对话太多且不递进，除了神经病安东尼，其余演员也都很凑活事
妳属于自己把自己折磨死的
今年最佳大爽片，编剧牛逼，反派角色牛逼，坏人太多了一环接一环，各自打自己的小算盘，悬疑感笑料娱乐元素十足，演技全程在线，摄影全程在线。内华达拉斯维加斯警局故事，黑色幽默有点儿昆丁的感觉，但没太血腥。一个警局场所拍的如此细腻，杀入警局那场戏估计能载入影史，警局到最后还有点儿生化危机浣熊市PD的感觉，目测能入围一个最佳编剧最佳男配。
-10000000000000000000000000000000。使用豆瓣三年半以来看过的最迷惑的电影没有之一，根本不存在任何能称为情节的东西，最后所有主角全都疯了，我也疯了。
我的天，什么玩意？我可是全部看完，就这？结局呢？收尾呢？这样也算电影？浪费时间了！做个反转这片子就大不同了。女主真的不行。
对于我这样的一个非专业观影人士，我能给予的评价就是还不错，不大一样的叙事方式。墨西哥海边美景赏心悦目，男主看似扑克脸的表演挺让我觉得扑朔迷离的。
今年最佳大爽片，编剧牛逼，反派角色牛逼，坏人太多了一环接一环，各自打自己的小算盘，悬疑感笑料娱乐元素十足，演技全程在线，摄影全程在线。内华达拉斯维加斯警局故事，黑色幽默有点儿昆丁的感觉，但没太血腥。一个警局场所拍的如此细腻，杀入警局那场戏估计能载入影史，警局到最后还有点儿生化危机浣熊市PD的感觉，目测能入围一个最佳编剧最佳男配。
当你想看一部打打杀杀的电影时，这部电影可以填个空。#20220204
开场让人以为是索尔贝娄小说的剧情：富家公子厌倦文明社会，去往第三世界寻找生活意义，不过这片是走到哪写到哪的放飞式拍法，三番四次地拍毫无意义的打炮场景，展示墨西哥的贫富差距和治安混乱可能是它最终想法。玩了一手信息误导：家庭中四个人的身份从父母子女到兄妹侄辈。编导始终摆着居高临下的态度，结尾装模作样地拍些流浪汉站街女，生怕观众不能领悟他的意图。用动物（干死的鱼，监狱里的猪）和一场一景来暗示人的动物性和固化，颇有低配哈内克的意思。（其实导演早期作品就是模仿哈内克的冷酷视角）提姆罗斯一副表情演完全片，这些年他接的全是些白开水文艺逼片子。
漏洞不多，但很不应该，好在小小空间，利用人物关系和节奏张力，竟拍出了有点过瘾的西部范儿，女警气场不怵两位动作大佬，有前途。。
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