Ode to Joy – Oda do Radosci (2005)

Directed by: Anna Kazejak-Dawid, Jan Komasa, Maciej Migas | 110 minutes | drama | Actors: Malgorata Buczkowska, Dorota Pomykala, Barbara Kurzaj, Piotr Glowacki, Roma Gasiorowska, Leslaw Zurek, Tomasz Lengren, Jan Dravnel

Three young Polish filmmakers have joined forces to make their first full-length film. The result, ‘Ode to Joy’, is a film that actually consists of three short films. With the same theme in mind and with the help of regular feedback and feedback on each other’s work, the three wrote and filmed their own script.

Yet ‘Ode to Joy’ is a surprisingly uniform film. In all three stories, the characters are portrayed credibly in fairly rough sketches, which is a requirement for a film that must be realistic. This credibility is achieved by portraying the main characters in a lifelike and (for Poland) recognizable environment: the mining and industrial areas in Silesia, the big city (Warsaw), and the past glory of the fishing industry in Pomerania. This realistic background does not make you happy: Poland is busy becoming a full member of the EU, and that means the end of many old economic certainties.

Poland is a country in economic development, but the current youth generation will not (for now) reap the benefits. And so the dilemma is: go abroad, work hard but earn money quickly; or stay in Poland, maybe one day find work and hope that you can patiently piggyback on developments in your own country.

This dilemma also applies to the three main characters from the three stories of ‘Ode to Joy’. Aga has just returned from a year of working in London and is immediately blown away: a striking father, a mother who can no longer keep her hairdressing business going and a boyfriend who wants to put her money into a house. Finally, she goes back disillusioned. This part manages to capture the gray reality effectively.

The second part, about a young rapper with an impossible love for the daughter of a rich businessman, is the most dramatic in tone: sometimes that works well, usually it is a bit too much drama.

The last part, about a student who ends up working again in the fishing village where he comes from, is a bit more melancholic in nature: beautiful, but sometimes just not entertaining enough.

The strength of ‘Ode to Joy’ lies mainly in the combination of the three beautiful portraits: portraits of three people, but also of the environment and the country of origin and of the dreams they hope to fulfill in London, the promised country. The fact that the three main characters in the last scene are all on the same bus, on their way to London, doesn’t even add that much. The strength of the combination of the three different stories can already be felt while looking at the individual stories themselves. The generally realistic and gritty style of filming in all three stories ensures that.

‘Ode to Joy’ (the title refers to the music piece of the same name by Beethoven, the ‘national anthem’ of the EU) thus provides a beautiful, but also disturbing image of a ‘lost’ generation that has to choose between staying true to its own country and family. or a solitary existence abroad.