Slideshow
THE WEDDING
Wesele
Poland, 1972
Directed by Andrzej Wajda
Starring Daniel Olbrychski, Ewa Ziętek, Marek Walczewski, Izabella Olszewska,
Approx. 106 mins.
The turn-of-the-century wedding between a famed poet and a peasant woman inspired the popular 1901 play The Wedding by Stanislaw Wyspiański. Written at a time when Polish intellectuals were trying to find connections with the country’s peasantry, the play is a satire of this idealistic urge, and an allegory for the nation’s history, making it ideal source material for this rarely screened adaptation. A kaleidoscopic whirl of activity, the film follows the revelries of the wedding guests, and things get more surreal as the evening goes on, and figures from Polish history appear, including a king’s jester, a medieval hero, and the leader of a peasant revolt. Wajda creates a fantasmagoria; he says he wanted “a film reality in which the worlds of thoughts, feelings, and occurrences might co-exist on an equal footing; where dream and reality would imperceptibly intertwine.”
Presented with support from The Ashes and Diamonds Fund for Eastern European Film and The Ada Katz Fund for Literature in Film
Reviews
“A visually stunning, incredibly sensual, and increasingly surreal film of breathtaking beauty and terror.”
– The Los Angeles Times
“A riotous wedding celebration that doubles as a devastating autopsy of a nation in paralysis, Andrzej Wajda’s adaptation of a 1901 beloved classic is as politically urgent as it is visually intoxicating.”
– James Morton, The Independent