22/05/2017

0-1 before halftime

Jan Kidawa-Błoński’s new movie fills a significant void in Polish cinema – we have to admit from the get-go that the sports film genre is basically nonexistent in Poland. 

Even though football in Gwiazdy serves only as a backdrop to the complex issues of nationality in Silesia, a difficult male friendship, and love for a woman. The movie is based on the life of Jan Banaś – a brilliant winger who could have been the cornerstone of Poland’s national team if his Polish-German ancestry hadn’t proven an impossible hurdle.

I’m not trying to convince anyone that sports films are at a worldwide high and every year brings new masterpieces in the genre. Still, throughout the history of cinematography sports have provided a a rich vein of metaphors for human struggle, against oneself and the world alike. Small wonder that athletic pursuits were a particular favorite of British New Wave filmmakers – Tony Richardson gave the charismatic Tom Courtenay the opportunity for a role of a lifetime in The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, which, though shot half a century ago, aged very little, and Lindsay Anderson’s This Sporting Life depicted a young miner moving up in life after getting signed with a rugby team.

Some newer films also gave sports a prominent place in the background, though not all could pull it off. Any Given Sunday, two and a half hours of Al Pacino agonizing over various problems as an American football coach, wasn’t Oliver Stone’s greatest achievement. Not everyone liked Bennett Miller’s Moneyball starring Brad Pitt as a charismatic young baseball manager trying to force the team to adopt new training and management styles against everyone’s wishes. Miller, however, discovered he enjoyed shooting films about sports and American mythology – his next picture, Foxcatcher, took a close look at the world of wrestling. Steve Carell, a renowned comedian, significantly altered his acting style to absolutely excel in the role of sinister billionaire John Du Pont recruiting a young, promising wrestler Mark Shultz (Channing Tatum) to give him some tough lessons about life and very loose approach to morality.

We could go on to list numerous boxing films – starting with the immortal, ever-changing Rocky – to bring home the point that Americans, at least, use sports as a metaphor to decipher their national mythology and depict class shifts in the society. And Poles? Well, we had Jarosław Żamojda’s 6 dni strusia, a total flop set in the early days of pro basketball in Poland. There was also Do przerwy 0:1, a young adult TV series shot decades ago, based on the much-beloved novel by Adam Bahdaj. Pro football and being drafted into the idealized Polonia Warszawa team were the height of unattainable dreams of the young, likeable protagonists; in the meantime they had to settle for kicking a rag ball around the courtyard.

Janusz Zaorski’s Soccer Poker is the inimitable pinnacle of Polish football films. Before I describe it in more detail, let me just state the obvious: Zaorski did so well because he’s a lifelong football fan and knows the game inside out, much like Kidawa-Błoński and several other artists, including novelists Wojciech Kuczok and, naturally, Jerzy Pilch. Pick-up games with the latter are now the stuff of legend in the offices of Polityka magazine which runs his weekly column: everyone knows that Pilch is fanatically devoted to football with all his being. To him, football is the most important religion. A religion which, admittedly, has numerous adherents around the world.

Football has nothing to do with the idea of amateur sports. In our times it’s a massive, self-propelling business – and, at its best, an incredible spectacle

The world of big games is ruled by televised broadcasts. The games are scheduled in a way that lets fans on almost every continent watch the matches live. The greatest stars, football virtuosos like Messi, negotiate contracts that bring them over 30 million Euro per year – plus ad revenue. Whether we like it or not, football has nothing to do with the idea of amateur sports. In our times it’s a massive, self-propelling business – and, at its best, an incredible spectacle. To a football fan like myself the drama and tension generated by a game exceed that of the best thriller. Cinema can only provide a substitute of these emotions; sure, it can condense, extract, and provide close-ups, but it’s really not going to win this competition.

That is why there are so few football films and the game itself usually gets relegated to the background. Even in the famous Escape to Victory, directed by the great John Huston, the match between POWs and German soldiers is just a pretext to show the preparations to a great escape from a Nazi camp. Football fans won’t be the only ones to appreciate that actual great football players of the time (that is, the 70s – the film was shot in 1981) have starred in it alongside Max von Sydow, Michael Caine, and leading man Sylvester Stallone: Brazilian Pele, Argentinian Osvaldo Ardiles, Englishman Bobby Moore, and – last but not least – Poland’s very own Kazimierz Deyna.

Soccer Poker features the excellent forward Dariusz Dziekanowski and equally brilliant goalie Józef Wandzik; famous coach Kazimierz Górski, who led the Polish national team to victory, appears in a brief cameo recalling the golden age of Polish football. Janusz Zaorski successfully inserted snippets of matches into the picture, but the key events take place off the field. Deals big and small are made behind the scenes, refs are bribed and games are thrown. Zaorski’s film remains magnificent even over two decades later; it’s a shame that the planned sequel never materialized. It’s no surprise that today’s Polish football league would still provide interesting content. Maybe some day…

Football features prominently in Gwiazdy, but the main storyline follows Jan Banaś (Mateusz Kościukiewicz): a gifted winger whose career did not live up to his aspirations and talent. Born Heinz-Dieter Banas to Silesian mother Anna (Magdalena Cielecka) and German father Hans (Paweł Deląg), Banaś’s mixed ancestry marked him for life. His father had left the family; when Banaś, then at the peak of his career, ran into him during an away match, Hans got him signed with the famous German team FC Koeln.

Thinking he was traveling to paradise, Banaś escaped through the Iron Curtain – but the paradise didn’t pan out. Polish football league officials and Silesian government worked to have him disqualified by FIFA. Later on he was banned from traveling to Western Europe with the national team. The ban, which barred his way to the 1972 Olympics and the World Cup in Germany two years later, basically ruined his career. Kidawa-Błoński’s movie shows Banaś on the bleachers watching the famous “water battle” – the Poland-West Germany match during the 1974 World Cup – and then has him taken to a police station. There, Banaś spills his whole life to the inspector (Adam Woronowicz), a fellow Silesian, while other officers excitedly follow the riveting match in the next room. In a moment Jan Tomaszewski will defend Uli Hoeness’ penalty strike, then Gerd Mueller will score the winning goal for Germany. These events frame Jan Kidawa-Błoński’s narrative.

The director of Gwiazdy adds another unusual personality – after Ryszard Riedel and Paweł Jasienica – to the list of his protagonists: Jan Banaś, a talented football player whose ancestry ruined his career  

The author of Little Rose returns to Silesia with his latest film. From company housing for miners to the arcane web of rules governing Silesian football at the time: for example, Górnik Zabrze players were given fictitious mining jobs to meet the requirements for team membership. It was an era of neverending parties and rivers of liquor – at that time, football stars were serious party animals. The movie shows snapshots of Górnik Zabrze’s way to the UEFA Cup Winners Cup (which to this day remains the greatest achievement of a Polish football club), where it lost to Manchester City. The unmistakable voiceovers of late sports commentator Jan Ciszewski, heard in archival footage of Zabrze and national team games (the identity of the scorer in the World Cup eliminations against England at Chorzów’s Silesian Stadium is still under debate: was it Banaś, Robert Gadocha, or Lesław Ćmikiewicz?), lend the film a nostalgic flair.

Jan Kidawa-Błoński uses the facts as a starting point and framework to the narrative. This is why he gave Banaś a difficult friendship with Ginter (Sebastian Fabijański), a lifelong rival for the affections of beautiful Marlena (Karolina Szymczyk); this is the reason for slice-of-life sequences arranged to reflect the dirty ambience of Silesia in the 1960s and 70s. Football fans may find it disappointing that the game doesn’t feature more prominently in the film – but the director had a different goal in mind. Kidawa-Błoński wanted to add another unusual personality – after blues musician Ryszard Riedel (pictured in Destined for Blues) and intellectual Paweł Jasienica (whose story inspired Kidawa-Błoński’s Little Rose) – to the list of his protagonists.

—Jacek Wakar (translated by Dariusz Kołaczkowski)

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