“The Green Border”, like no other film, has ignited public debate in recent days. Zbigniew Ziobro shamefully compared Agnieszka Holland’s work to Nazi propaganda, and in just a few days almost eight thousand reviews of the production, which had not yet had its Polish premiere, appeared on Filmweb. Unlike the morally heightened “reviewers”, we saw the film.
After watching “The Green Border” I needed a few hours to recover. Because although it is a theoretically fictional production, the script contains the experiences of hundreds, if not thousands of people. I saw there what I read in the media, what I heard on the radio, what was shown on television in connection with the crisis in the Polish-Belarusian region and what was told by people living in this region. And yet I have the impression that the scriptwriters, while bearing witness to the drama that unfolds there, somehow spared the viewers the most drastic and terrifying thing.
The “green border” was not even close to propaganda
Even showing endless push-backs, violence against deceived refugees: lying, stealing, destroying phones, clubbing, mental abuse, beating pregnant women and elderly people, throwing corpses through barbed wire, taking them to the forest even from the hospital, the filmmakers do not show off these scenes. Here, the narrative does not serve to shower the viewer with cruelty and highlight it: it is part of the reality that appears here in terrifyingly gray colors. Literally and figuratively.
The decision to shoot a feature film with a reporter’s camera, but with black and white photos, is the best possible choice. Thanks to this, the narrative gives the impression of being literally taken out of the real world, and at the same time the image creates the opportunity to build the distance needed to survive the session. Otherwise, the film would be tugging at your throat.
This simple procedure also reminds us that people are not clearly morally bad or good – here white and black merge into many shades of gray. This is also the purpose of dividing the film into parts told from the perspective of various participants in the drama: a family fleeing Syria, a border guard, activists trying to help people dying at the border, and Julia, who lives nearby, who decides to join them and fight against adversities. Their threads are intertwined and give a complex, ambiguous picture of a complicated situation. Each of these people is presented with empathy, in the broader context of what is happening in their lives and how it affects how they try to cope with difficult situations.
Needless to say, our skin crawls and the lump in our throat grows when we first learn about the situation on the border from the perspective of people treated as cannon fodder in the fights between Polish and Belarusian border guards. This is a family that wants to join a relative in Sweden after five years in a refugee camp. Apparently everything has been agreed and crossing the Polish-Belarusian border will be just a formality. The nightmare begins quickly and brutally, and the huge blow is the scene in which Polish guards betray trust at the most basic level: they lie to a family with small children that they will take them to a safe place. They do this only to push them to the other side of the wall, where Belarusian soldiers have no qualms about harming people.
“The Green Border” is Włosok’s showpiece
Immediately afterwards, the perspective of the border guard he plays appears. The fact that the film will not attack the Border Guard as a political campaign (or whatever right-wing opponents imagine it) is obvious from the moment you know that this is the actor playing the mentioned role. This extremely talented artist gives excellent evidence of his talent here. But let’s be honest: it’s really impossible not to like him. Włosok does not evoke truly negative emotions, even if his character does something that could be considered bad, because it is simply the result of his great confusion.
His hero serves in the Border Guard and is expecting the birth of his first child with his wife, and is also trying to build a new house for them. At the same time, he has to do cruel things at work and he is clearly struggling with it. There is also no one to confide in. His colleagues at work, like him, deny what is happening or occasionally show psychopathic traits. But these people also become weak and vomit when they see corpses dumped in the forest, and when they can, they look away or remain silent, e.g. when they see human shadows running sideways somewhere.
The hero of Włosok is internally conflicted: he wants to take care of his family and fulfill his duties, but his official duties are devastating. He fights with himself and hides these most human reflexes from everyone. He can’t even tell his wife how he feels, what’s really going on – on the border and in his head. But he starts drinking heavily because he can’t cope. When confronted with a video in which she recognizes him, he tells her, “This is my service, do you understand?” Włosok does it in such a way that he expresses much more emotions than can be contained in a few paragraphs. The scene in which she undresses in front of the mirror and screams in despair is equally symbolic.
Paradoxically, although it shows uniformed officers committing atrocities, these atrocities do not cover their humanity. We get the context in which they function, what their superiors who give orders tell them. Some put up passive resistance, others resort to stimulants, and still others derive sadistic pleasure from the power they have over defenseless victims, who are almost impossible to defend against this situation. So we have scenes in which these people do cruel, vile, malicious, vulgarly brutal or simply mean things – but these are essences of certain attitudes and behaviors concentrated in a lens, even allegories.
We observe, among others: a notable sent from the headquarters who tells the border guards that he doesn’t care about their morale, but they should remember that on the border they are “not people”, but “living bullets” sent by Putin and Lukashenko to the front of the hybrid war. “There are supposed to be no corpses here,” he says, dehumanizing fathers fleeing the war who take their children with them, because “what kind of father takes a child on such a journey.”
The director also shows a policewoman who, with malicious satisfaction, gives the heroine, played by Maja Ostaszewska, a ticket because she sees a newspaper on the seat of her car with a photo of border guards throwing a pregnant woman over the barbed wire. Then there is a scene of a strip search carried out with sadistic pleasure, malicious vandalism by uniformed officers and racist remarks. At the same time, this is countered by scenes with ordinary people sharing water and food. Not to mention the very present prospect of desperately fighting activists going out of their way to provide support. The problem is that the government makes this help as difficult as possible, tries to reduce it to the rank of prohibited acts and oppresses those whom it should support. And yet they still fight.
“The Green Border” is not a lampoon or propaganda. It’s a story about humanity
The most difficult thing was watching the scenes in which people who were starving, cold, injured, often sick and exhausted had to be told that no one could take them with them from the forest, because the police would chase them for it and most likely arrest them. And if the activists go to prison, there will be no one to help further, even by bringing warm and dry clothes, medicines and food. The greatest tragedy seems to me to be the awareness that it is impossible to legally provide shelter and care, or to secure the most basic human needs.
Therefore, the “green border” does not attack individual people, institutions, political parties or groups. Everyone is criticized for something here, but the biggest blow and accusation falls on the European Union, which for years has allowed thousands of people to die trying to get to Europe from various directions. Because the situation on the Polish-Belarusian border is not an isolated case.
I won’t hide the fact that this film is half an hour too long, and some of the plot and formal devices are too obvious. Let us add that the rapping scene is really school didacticism sprinkled with “youth modernity”. But all this does not take away from the power of the message of “The Green Border”, which hits with the force of an atomic bomb.
Source: Gazeta
Bruce is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment . He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the industry.
