Szamanka - with ENGLISH subtitles (1996)

Director Andrzej Zulawski's adaptation of Manuela Gretkowska's controversial screenplay reaches new extremes in the depiction of brutality, explicit sex, and passion as it tells the story of an anthropology professor Michal's (Boguslaw Linda) growing obsession with a mummified shaman; spirituality; and the enigmatic, sexually voracious, violently disturbed beauty known only as "The Italian" (Iwona Petry). Along with very explicit erotic scenes, the film contains Zulawski's usual deliberate assaults on conventional morality, Catholicism, and Polish censorship - any of which may offend certain viewers. Product Description

Pure Cinema! Intense & Violent MASTERPIECE that breaks all the rules!

Violence, exuberance and sexuality, director Andrzej Zulawski suggests, are the key ingredients of Chamanka. Adapted from a provocative, but hugely successful, Polish novel, it is the story of a 30 year-old anthropology professor (played by Boguslaw Linda, arguably the most charismatic Polish actor since Zbigniew Cybulski) with two obsessions: one is a beautiful young Italian student (Iwona Petri) he meets by chance at Cracow Railway Station; the other, more disturbingly, the 3,000 year-old, perfectly preserved body of a Shaman he and his colleagues have recently dragged out of a swamp.

A French/Polish co-production, Chamanka underlines Zulawski's commitment to pushing back aesthetic boundaries. He has always been a maverick. Like his mentor, Andrzej Wajda, he was frequently in trouble with the authorities in Poland during the Communist era. Two of his films, The Silver Globe and The Devil, were banned. Much of his subsequent work has been done in France, but has often proved equally contentious.

Zulawski was eager to make a film which touched on themes beyond the pale in contemporary cinema, namely irrationalism, necrophilia and mysticism. Linda's character starts the film like a typical modern European. He's the bourgeois everyman; an academic, skeptical about life and out of touch with his spiritual side. But his research into shaman and his erotically charged affair with the Italian woman shake him out of his certainties.

Not that the film breaks all the rules. On one level, it's a simple, if very intense, love story; a drama about how romantic obsession is both benign and potentially very destructive. "The lunatic, the lover and the poet are of imagination all compact," Shakespeare wrote in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Zulawski's lyrical, morbid tale suggests that sentiment still has some currency.

Music Score by acclaimed composer Andrzej korzynski will leave you breathless!

DVD: (This Russian import is the only version of Szamanka currently available with English subtitles!)

Picture Quality: 2/5 Widescreen but NOT ANAMORPHIC
Audio Quality: 2/5 (The Original Language for this film is Polish! Provided on the DVD are French & Russian Dubs, NO Polish Audio! This really hurts the film if you haven't seen the original version!)
Subtitles: Poor English subtitles!
Extras: 0/5 -- Nothing, not even a trailer!

Overall: 2.5/5

Hopefully a better edition with Zulawski commentary will be available.
March 7, 2007

"Chamanka - Italianka" or "The Last Tango in Krakow"

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Director Andrzej Zulawski's adaptation of Manuela Gretkowska's controversial screenplay tells the story of an anthropology professor Michal's (Boguslaw Linda) who as the movie progresses develops two overwhelming obsessions. The first one is a mummified, 3,000 year-old, perfectly preserved body of a Shaman he and his colleagues have recently dragged out of a swamp, and the second - an enigmatic student (Iwona Petry) he meets by chance at Krakow Railway Station. In exactly a minute after they meet, they have passionate but joyless sex "The Last Tango in Paris" style. The girl whose name we'll never learn has been known as "The Italian" - she is not an Italian, she just used to work at the Italian Restaurant and make the best Pizza in town (or so she says). She emits some primitive, dangerous sexuality - she is unpredictable, swift and reckless. Very soon she and the professor are engaged in the affair that grows dark and explicit, and the movie enters "In The Realm of Senses" territory which prepares you for a very predictable and (if you ask me) ridiculous ending. Between plentiful (and boring) erotic scenes, Michal tries to solve the mystery of the Shaman (remember, it is his first obsession?) There is one absolutely comical scene with Michal and his colleagues chanting and dancing around an indifferent mummy. There are also some young men running the streets of Krakow, screaming and firing the guns (I believe that it is supposed to represent the director's comments and criticism of the Polish Politics - but he lost me there). By the end of the movie Michal realizes that he must run from "The Italian" because (as he correctly guessed) "she is death" but the sexually insatiable, mentally unstable, and violently disturbed girl has another plans for him...

I don't know what to think about this movie - is it an underrated breathtaking masterpiece of brutality, explicit sex, and passion that know no boundaries and no mercy or just a most pretentious, ridiculous, badly edited, and absolutely not original piece of cinematic garbage I've ever seen? The more I think of the fact that I had been smiling, laughing, and giggling through the entire movie (and I don't think that it was an expected reaction on this horror/occult/adult drama) the more it makes me lean to latter. Perhaps, if I'd never heard of or seen "The Last Tango in Paris", "In the Realm of Senses", "The Piano Teacher", I would've been in awe but I've seen them all and "Chamanka" did not tell me anything new about obsessive-possessive love-passion-hate that inevitably leads to self-destruction and death. Oh, no, wait, the creators of the movie threw in some nice and spicy elements as irrationalism, necrophilia, mysticism, and (wow!) cannibalism but I happened to have read Harris' "Hannibal" and the dinner served a-la Dr. Lector did not shock me; on the contrary I found it laughable. I know that Zhulavski had been in trouble with the authorities in Poland during the Communist era and the obvious assaults on conventional morality, Catholicism, and Polish censorship - can be clearly seen in his film but that did not make it more interesting for me, either.

November 16, 2006

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