The Wedding
PUBLICITY
A sharp, taunting and respectless portrait of Polish hypocrisy and cockiness. The trigger of events here, set off by human greed and stupidity doesn’t set off a loud bang, but a mean curse.
(Bartosz Zurawiecki, "Film")
The director understands how to draw the viewer into the drunken round-dance of events with every passing minute, whereby the virtues blur and the burdens become ever heavier ... a drama? More a psychodrama, which is as funny as it is painful.”
(Lech Kurpiewski, "Newsweek")
At this wedding, love is only spoken of right at the end; before that, it’s all about mammon. The director’s view of this “petit-bourgeois” wedding possesses a Brechtian mercilessness and an invitation to judge the behaviour of those involved. Not from moral criteria, because these have long since dissolved, but more like sporting ones: who is the cleverest at doing deals?
(B. Schweizerhof) (Source: Crossing Europe Film Festival Katalog 2005)
I‘ve heard – more than once – an opinion that The Wedding
should never be presented outside of Poland, because it depicts our country
in a way we, Polish people, don‘t want to be seen by foreigners. Needless
to say, I was curious to hear the foreigners‘ reaction. Surprisingly,
The Wedding became the most wanted Polish film of 2004/2005.
Using the name The Wedding as a title was an act of bravery on the part of
the director Wojtek Smarzowski. In Polish tradition it is a sacred title – there
was a theatre play of the same title from 1901 by Stanislaw Wyspianski, dubbed ”the
most original play written for the theatre in the Polish language“, and
a classical film from the 1970s by Andrzej Wajda.
(Stefan Laudyn) (Source: Crossing Europe Film Festival catalogue, 2005)