The Polish Bride (1998)

Don't listen to the negative reviews

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

I love this movie, but for slightly different reasons than mentioned here. I'm from the Netherlands, and I grew up in a village in the eastern part of Friesland, which is very similar to the countryside of Groningen.Halfway during the movie I noticed there were tears in my eyes. Oddly enough, it wasn't during an emotional scene between the main characters. It was a shot of the countryside of Groningen. The scenery wasn't extraordinarily beautiful or anything. Yet somehow, it had managed to perfectly capture the feeling the Dutch countryside gives me whenever I'm visiting my parents.And then I realized it wasn't just the scenery, it also was the slow pace of the movie, the lack of dialogue between the two main characters, or the lack of much happening at all during most of the movie. The solitude of the farmer's life, the gentle moments between the main characters, the two of them being all alone in their own little world.That one of the characters was a Polish woman on the run from pimps is just a McGuffin, this movie really isn't about that. It's about the feeling of living on the north-eastern Dutch countryside. If cinematography feels a little odd now and then, it's because it's completely focused on capturing the feeling of being on a Dutch farm, the story and it's characters being less important.People are remembered. Exciting events are remembered. What movie is about remembering the feeling of living at a certain place at a certain time? OK, and what if we're not talking about someone's memories of growing up? Yeah, those kind of movies are rare, aren't they? This movie is one of them, and one of the best.When people are going to watch this movie in a couple of decades, if they're still capable of investing themselves into a slow paced, technically inferior movie with an unexciting storyline compared to whatever they'll be used to by then, they're going to experience what it's like to live the the sobering, lonely yet somehow also magical and sometimes beautiful life of a Dutch farmer and his Polish bride.

Anna, an abused Polish immigrant forced to work as a prostitute, is rescued by Henk, a taciturn and reclusive farmer. Gradually, as Anna recovers, Henk slowly wins her trust.The film is a subtle, tender love story. Anna, in turn, affects Henk's life bringing a sense of vitality (she sings in the empty house) which brings the emotionally repressed farmer out of his shell. Clearly, this is a man with much love to give but who has retreated himself for one reason or another.It's a very slow paced film, perhaps too much so, but then it is more a character study of two very different, but equally lonely people falling in love.My major criticsim of the film is its ending. Anna's 'employers' return and are brutally murdered; I thought this was quite well done resolving the thriller element of the plot quite effectively. However, Anna & Henk, finally consummate their love immediately after the murders. This seemed out of place and harmony with the rest of the film. It might have been better if the lovers had consummated their passion first before the return of the dreaded pimps, thus adding to the tension of whether their relationship would survive.An interesting film and I think one of the Dutch reviewers was a little harsh on his nation's recent film output. 'Antonia's Line' and 'Character' are very distinctive films; they may not be huge 'hits' or garner many plaudits, but they are original. In a cinematic world which is highly derivative, that is no such bad thing.

I was thrown off balance during The Polish Bride, when Anna's "employers" return to the farm and Henk kills one with a shotgun. Even though they had worked him over and killed his dog on their previous visit, the sudden violence was a shock and seemed too improbable. It wasn't just that Henk had not involved the police but that he when he fired it wasn't quite self-defense. He didn't try to drive the men away by threatening them and didn't wait for them to fire first or even point a gun at him. He just came right out and blew the man away, apparently having made up his mind there was no other way to deal with these men. Apparently they wanted Anna, a Polish immigrant, to work as a prostitute, but even this is little explained, and one of them was the man who had raped Anna, but again, the movie takes little pains to let us know this is the same man. So, it's quite a twist to suddenly be watching a crime movie. Up to this point it's been a characteristically European drama in which the last thing you expect is this kind of violence. A young man from Holland in the audience commented that it's not at all unusual for the rural Dutch to deal with problems in such a way, without involving the police, whom, he said, are mostly useless in any event, if only because such crimes are so rare.After Anna bludgeons the second man, the excruciatingly slow courtship between them suddenly bursts into passion, and they have sex on the floor next to the bloody body of the man just gruesomely killed. One surprise after another. So they've finally broken the last bit of ice between them and have become a couple? No, surprise again. They retire to their separate rooms and she leaves mysteriously for Poland before returning, if it's not Henk's dream, with her daughter. So are they going to live happily ever after on a farm with the graves of two slain gangsters? Who would want to think this is emotionally possible, even if it were realistic in that community? The inherent unsatisfactoriness of such an ending makes you look for other meanings, but without such an ending, the ironies and bizarre darkness of the film only seem greater. Whereas Under the Sun leaves you feeling there's something strong and decent in the troubled human spirit, The Polish Bride leaves you in some doubt.The fascinating elements of this film are all the things that are left unexplained, the way we have to guess, interpret and imagine what's going on behind the events and gestures and expressions we witness. But probably too much is left unsaid. And not just the fact that Anna's employers are underworld figures despite the legality of prostitution in Holland. If Anna is afraid of intimacy with Henk because of having been raped, she doesn't show it, or the movie doesn't let her show it. Her emotional state seems to heal faster than the wound over her eye, and she becomes so comfortable with Henk so quickly, that it's his sexual abstinence that has us more puzzled.One of the effective and priceless scenes is the meal in which a mother-like Anna officiously schools Henk in her etiquette of eating and praying and Henk nearly erupts in rage and frustration, unable to understand why he is allowing her of all people to treat him as if he were a child, but in a kind of curiosity and amazement, let's her go on. It's in such little ways that we're given to glimpse Henk's unspoken feelings for Anna.

Pleasant to watch. Subtle humor and a convincing love story. If I were to fall in love I'd like it to be in this manner.