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 he Polish movie "The Old Tale" reminds me not to
take things for granted -- although not in the way you might be thinking. Here's
why: the film's script is oddly unconcern with imparting important info
to the audience -- such as the names of its characters. Seriously, folks, I've
never encountered this problem before, but the movie never once tells us
the name of its female lead. Unless, of course, there were problems with the
subtitles, since I don't speak Polish. Or maybe they mentioned her name just
once in the entire movie and I wasn't paying attention. Anything's possible.
"The Old Tale" is based on a novel by Jozef
Ignacy Kraszewski and its full title is "The Old Tale: When the Sun was
God", alluding to the fact that Polish people in the 9th century
worshipped the sun as a God. And since the movie showcases moments of
"God's wrath" taking place, who can blame them? The film follows the
evil Duchess (Malgorzata Foremniak, whose character is also never named) as she
plots to make her son the next king. Unfortunately for Duchess, she is an
ex-slave purchased by Prince Popiel (Bogdan Stupka), and thus her son is also a
slave and can't inherit the kingdom because the ruling Assembly won't allow it.
What's an ambitious mom to do? Why, slaughter the Assembly, of course!
Thus begins the struggle, with the peasants ganging up to
take on the scheming Duchess and her mad (not to mention easily manipulated)
husband Popiel, who ended up on the throne because his brother, the rightful
king, died unexpectedly and his sons were too young to take over. By the time
the sons have grown up and are ready to ascend, Popiel kills one while the boy
is asleep and frames the other. Of course killing his own nephews is a minor
diversion for Popiel, who proceeds to either poison or decapitate everyone else
who disagrees with his evil wife's plans. If you haven't guessed, this husband
and wife team is evil.
In a backhanded sort of way I guess you can credit director
Jerzy Hoffman and co-writer Jozef Hen for writing a script that has absolutely
no ambiguity or complications to it. The A-plot is straightforward and breaks
down in a simplistic fashion. In-between watching Bogdan Stupka act crazy and
Marina Aleksandrova ("Avalon")
act evil, the film spends its time with charming loner Zietmowit (Michal
Zebrowski) as he chases after the beautiful Dziwa (Marina Aleksandrova). Alas
Dziwa is forbidden mortal pleasures because she's been promised to a local
shrine as a priestess. (If you were wondering how I knew whom the Dziwa and
Duchess characters were since their names are never mentioned, it's a combination
of guessing and surfing the net. Needless to say, I shouldn't have had to do
this if the movie had done its job.)
Amusingly, "The Old Tale" is populated,
seemingly, by idiots. One suspect that peasants in the 9th century
were actually like this -- unlearned, chauvinistic, and generally incapable of
stringing together two coherent thoughts in a row. In fact, you've never seen
such lousy strategists in a movie before, not to mention ones so dirty, unkempt,
loud, and prone to violent acts because they don't know any better. It's no
surprise that all Popiel has to do in order to repel the peasant attack is to
close his fortress's front door, since these guys are so dumb they'll run right
up to it and get killed en masse. Except for a selected few -- Daniel
Olbrychski's Guardian and Foremniak's Duchess being two -- most of the
characters in the movie are pretty thickheaded.
As a period film, "The Old Tale" has an authentic
look. Things are generally very dirty, as they probably should be for people who
live in the woods and off the land. Although I'm not sure how this explains why
both Dziwa and another young lass name Mila (Katarzyna Bujakiewicz) have
amazingly clear features when everyone is covered in mud, dirt, and sporting
rotting teeth. How exactly did these two fair maidens end up so ravishing? In
any case, the camera practically drools over Aleksandrova, and you will too once
you catch sight of those lovely green eyes.
For action junkies suffering from withdrawal because it's
been a while since "Braveheart",
they might find some satisfaction here. There's plenty of battles, all involving
brutal combat that usually ends with the ground covered in bodies. Director
Jerzy Hoffman even throws in some clever uses of CGI to enhance the action. But
while there's a lot of action, much of it is badly edited, resulting in an
incoherent feel, as well as a general lack of flow. Granted, medieval combat
might have been jagged and incomprehensible as shown, but this is a movie,
and one expects some exercise of creative licenses to make things a bit more
coherent.
In the final analysis, "The Old Tale" is a pretty
decent movie. It's rarely boring, the locations look very authentic, and the
female eye candy provided by Marina Aleksandrova and Katarzyna Bujakiewicz (and
yes, I did have to look up their names each time I typed it) is more than enough
for the men in the audience. The brutal medieval combat is also entertaining,
albeit a little amateurish in spots. Then again, you gotta love it when the
Vikings show up to do some plundering and a whole lot of killing.
Still, one wishes the script was smarter and taken its time
to not only tell us who is who, but give them more than just archetypical
characteristics.
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