Pogoda na jutro
**/****
starring Jerzy Stuhr, Malgorzata Zajaczkowska, Roma Gasiorowska, Barbara Kaluzna
screenplay by Mieczyslaw Herba & Jerzy Stuhr
directed by Jerzy Stuhr
by Walter Chaw Polish institution Jerzy Stuhr fashions a peculiarly self-serving morality opera starring himself as a man who drops out for seventeen years to serve in a monastery, only to be “outed” one day by his jilted wife, two daughters, and son. Each child represents some newly-contracted ill that his beloved homeland has acquired since his auto-sequester: youngest Kilga (Roma Gasiorowska) is a dreadlocked hophead pushing dope to thirteen-year-olds; middle Ola (Barbara Kaluzna) is the star of a smutty reality television show that features her doing every imaginable thing in a glass apartment; and oldest Marcin (Maciej Stuhr, son of Jerzy) is the Karl Rove to a seedy Polish politician. Heavy-handed in its sociology, Tomorrow’s Weather (Pogoda na jutro) seeks to be an indictment of the dark side of Solidarity (poor papa Lech Walesa–sort of a ringer for Stuhr, come to think of it–never saw this coming), but more resembles a bit of self-aggrandizement, martyr-style. Stuhr’s rotund everyman carries the weight of the world in the creases of his bloodhound kisser, resolving as a pale imitation of mentor Krzysztof Kieslowski’s mini-parables: too leaden, too obvious, and, as it happens, too unpleasant. Kilga gets maimed, Ola gets a horror movie gash on her arm…and maimed, Marcin shoots himself in the arm and lacerates his scalp (maimed), and long-suffering wife Renata (Malgorzata Zajaczkowska) has a heart attack (not maimed)–all this Sturm und Drang at the service of a joke epilogue and a self-pitying conclusion. Bad form to roll the old peepers, but the temptation to do so is nearly irresistible.
