In a film whose colour palette registers the melancholic aesthetic of a Rembrandt painting, Polish filmmaker Karol Pałka goes deep into the heart of the Polish countryside to chronicle four years in the lives of mother Danusia and daughter Basia, in the process telling a moving story of longing and absence.
The director tells how it took him six months to gain access to the inside of Danusia and Basia’s farmstead, but he was prepared to wait in order to gain their trust, such was the distance they studiously maintained from any kind of urban life, and the obvious fascination he held for them.
“The first meetings involved watching each other carefully, with considerable distrust on their part. They are curious about everything that comes from the outside world, but also cautious. Getting to know each other is a slow process,” Pałka explains. “At first, we see their lives only from the perspective of their yard, but then gradually we’re let inside the house and allowed to discover the rest of their world.”
The farmhouse is a basic domicile with no bathroom and an earth floor which sends up plumes of dust when swept, but nevertheless the place has a sepia comfort. Pictures of Pope John Paul II festoon the walls and legions of dogs roam freely. They have an ancient television on which they watch church services and, when the weather is clement, they picnic outside, just the pair of them, with goats and hounds in attendance.
Basia shows signs of learning difficulties but maintains a diary, or a book in which she writes notes, or maybe it is poetry – we don’t know. Her mother Danusia takes to the fields where she walks in a silence that is overlaid with narrated reflections on matters spiritual.
“This is a beautiful world, totally other from ours,” Pałka says. “And without all the negative emotions that accompany us in our modern and fast world.” He adds how, “with time, our attention is focused on their spiritual and emotional experiences… and everything primal.”
Yet at the heart of the film is a deep sense of melancholy and absence. Mother Danusia’s reflections involve a dialogue with a woman who is no longer here, possibly an old friend, who tells of an incessant thirst, and who warns of imps in the afterlife that walk on a carpet of flowers.
Basia meanwhile has a male friend named Franek with whom she speaks on her mobile phone and from whom she receives presents, such as a CD player. But despite her constant readiness for his arrival, Franek never materialises.
Pałka refuses to talk of Basia in the context of a learning disability – “it’s not important for the film or for the story,” he says – but she is still somebody, he concedes, who is accorded the status of ‘otherness.’
“We [society at large] have so many prejudices against otherness. It’s our comfort position. It’s our bliss of ignorance,” he says. “We need to look [out] for other people. This film is an attempt to take a closer look.”
The filmmaker also regrets the disappearance, or absence, of his country’s folklore and traditions, and cites Aleksander Gieysztor’s ‘Mythology of Slavs’ which outlines the development of Slavic belief structures in the pre-Christian period and their subsequent diminution in terms of influence and importance.
“I have an impression that today, surrounded by the modern, very dynamic culture, we have a tendency to forget that our roots come from the Slavic tradition,” says Pałka. “From my perspective, [our] present lifestyle often hasn’t enough space for the reflection about spirituality. Slavic mythology in my opinion might be a kind of precious source and that’s the main reason why I wanted to evoke it in Bucolic.”
The film was developed during the DOK PRO course at the Wajda School and is co-financed by Polish Film Institute, Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. Sales are handled by Taskovski Films.
