I watched “Nothing by Force” and I already know what not to do with the movie [LISTA]

“Nothing by Force” is a romantic comedy about a cook, Oliwka (Anna Szymańczyk, brilliant in “ze”, here she couldn’t decide what the girl should play, so she played a bit of everything), who is tricked by her grandmother Helena () into a small village in Podlasie. He is supposed to help save her farm, which of course she doesn’t want to do at first, but naturally she changes her mind over time. In addition, she falls in love with a local farmer (Mateusz Janicki) quite by accident, but there is a conflict of interests and it is dramatic for a while, but not so much that there is no happy ending.

“Nothing by force” is watched all over the world. I turned it on and was surprised

The story resonated with international audiences so much that the comedy remained among the most watched foreign-language films globally for a second week. Moreover, it ranks quite high, in second place. However, “Nothing by Force” is not a tomato soup so that everyone will like it. The more viewership, the more accusations.

“Barciś and Seniuk definitely have ‘too high qualifications for this job’. The actors suffer, the viewer suffers, everyone suffers, but I appreciate the irony in the title” – wrote the PigOut blogger on Filmweb, and other users of the site add “I’m from Podlasie and it irritated me to the max me this movie”, “Forced jokes, reactions, accent… Mascara”, “Unwatchable crap”, “Cepeliada”. Pop Culture Animal (Katarzyna Czajka-Kominiarczuk) called the comedy “nightmare” in her text about the film paradox of Podlasie, and Karolina Korwin Piotrowska from Kolej gave it four out of ten stars. The more dissatisfied comments I read, the more tempted I was to check it all out.

And now I know: the worst thing about this film is that it is simply “average”: neither very bad or particularly good, nor exceptionally good. Mostly it’s nice, the cast goes above and beyond, selling even very dry jokes, the animals are cute, the views are extremely picturesque, but unfortunately this is not enough to stand up as a whole. Several elements took away my full enjoyment from “reading”, and after collecting them, it becomes a list of “what not to do” with the film.

1. Less is more – don’t make the video too long

“Nothing by Force” would have had the potential to be a very neat and pleasant film to “improve your mood” if someone had dared to cut 20-30 minutes out of it in the editing process. The script is sprawling and tries to follow two, if not three, paths at the same time: a love story, a forced settlement in the countryside focused on the granddaughter’s big-city career, and a presentation of the so-called local color, which includes, among others, presenting a network of local connections, an episode that was too light-hearted (in fact, no actress or actor’s potential was used here), comedy-genre scenes with goats, poultry and horses, admiring charming landscapes and interiors of chicken huts straight from an open-air museum, and monologues that were too much a determined 9-year-old. Additionally, there are jokes that dangerously straddle the line between a funny gag and a worn-out stereotype/film cliché.

As a result, where there should be some thickening of the action or a solid climax where everything comes together, we get a sequence of scenes that go on without any reason, picturesque but bland from the point of view of the plot. It could even be relaxing if they were filming a drama series here and a moment of rest was needed. And it’s just cluttered and tiring.

2. Decide what you’re shooting – don’t do a weird hybrid

Someone here tried to combine a vision of the world from TVN series with an ode to locality straight from “Rancz”. It’s falling apart at the seams, even plot-wise. Almost the entire village is involved in the intrigue of grandmother Helena, who instead of telling her granddaughter Oliwia what problems she has and why she quarreled with her mother: two neighbors and their husbands-in-law from the joint production of zajzajer (here Paulina Holtz is particularly charming in her comedy performances). and Piotr Rogucki), a local policewoman, Mr. Jan, who has a crush on Grandma Helena (how charming and charming), etc. They have some money, some not (it’s very inconsistent), they often say “for me”, they live in these cottages and are rather comedic characters. exaggerated. The cast does a good job, but the actors themselves can’t make up for the weak points of the script.

In contrast, he (the lover’s father), Wojciech Błach (the main character’s boss), Piotr Janicki (the nice lover) and most of them Szymańczyk (the lover) play “normally”. The latter is particularly awkward: she can’t fully unfasten her roller skates and play with comedy conventions, because apart from being funny, she also has to be a “rheumatic” heroine, the kind of thoughtful, difficult to get, but at the same time craving for affection despite herself. So you can get lost in it all.

Conventions are intertwined a bit, but they are used rather arbitrarily and inconsistently, including how the script uses the fact that the main character is a professional cook/chef. Her fine dining dishes are, of course, asparagus shaken in a pan in an unknown sauce, bruschetta on toasted country bread and homemade focaccia. The girl can’t handle Podlasie cheeses that well at the beginning, but the problem is solved somehow outside the frame and in the so-called meantime. And I won’t say that if someone wants to convince me that the heroine of the film is an outstanding culinary expert, please don’t do it with a scene in which a chick cuts a tomato (yes, a nice one) into slices, then into cubes and mixes them. with chives from grandma’s garden. On the one hand, it’s “Magda M.” / “Recipe for life” or, on the other hand, “”/ “At God’s Garden” exactly.

3. If the actress is not convinced, do not make an off-take narration

“Nothing by Force” is half an hour behind the long production, and yet the scriptwriters felt that they had to explain a lot in the main character’s monologue, read off-screen. Anna Szymańczyk was clearly struggling with this. Not because she couldn’t say it well. It is simply a trivially generic guide that is not written in accordance with the character’s character, which is manifested in her actions during the film. And it is especially irritating at the end of this long story, because it seems forced for compositional reasons. Seriously, we still have the finale divided into two parts (the intrigue prepared by and for grandma is explained, plus we follow the pattern of opposites attracting each other in love and the tragic choice between a lonely career in the city and cooking grapeshot and love in the countryside), bringing it to a close his comment deprives me of faith in reason and human dignity.

4. Don’t waste the atmosphere…

All the beautiful views from this fairy-tale Podlasie, where people constantly ride motorbikes and gallop on horses through endless meadows, are of no use when you really don’t know what the scriptwriters wanted. As soon as it seems that, for example, they will touch on the topic of Oliwka’s family conflict, the heroine has to find out why her grandmother is in debt and cannot cope with the economy, which is why she has to give up her dream career in Wrocław. And then, instead of returning to the development of this family genesis, our townswoman, forced to settle in the countryside, begins to fall in love with the handsome (and probably the only one in the entire village) single person whom she shouted at at the beginning. Then we drift away from romantic flashes into conversations with unruly goats, dico-polo guitar recitals or folk songs (in Podlasie, as we know, there is simply no other music), to suddenly return to grandma. There is a bit too much going on there and for too long for subsequent scenes to capitalize on the visual/comedy/emotional capital developed in individual shots.

5. …nor put generic music on the soundtrack

The right soundtrack, or even just one song, can determine whether viewers will remember the film for longer. Here someone decided to use pop songs in English, which, firstly, sound dramatically formulaic and bland, and secondly, they fit here like a fist. Music is an important tool – it helps build tension, indicates that something is about to happen, and emphasizes the atmosphere and mood. I didn’t pay much attention to it here. This is another untapped potential.

6. Don’t be bland and don’t force anything (allusion to the title intended)

The Podlasie threads are added in “Nothing by Force” to tell the global viewer a nice fairy tale about a mythical village where the sun always shines, goats and horses are naturally clean and shiny, people live in a timelessness, and the grass is greener than anywhere else. So that people wouldn’t get diabetes from it, a handful of jokes and gags were added, e.g. about running moonshine and clumsy townsfolk, and they also added some puffing sauce. But lest anyone exaggerate with humor here, we also got a seriously serious love story in which the woman herself must come to the conclusion that although her professional place is in the kitchen, this kitchen is not in the city, but in the charming countryside – just like your grandma wanted. Because the movie is too long, I wasn’t interested in the ending itself and I was only surprised that they hadn’t finished YET.

PS I am delighted that the film touches on the topic of martens chewing cables in cars. You need to educate yourself on such topics.

PS2. If Mateusz Janicki had played the same nice Mr. Samochodzik as he plays the lover Kuba here, that film would have gained a lot from it.

PS3. I would like to see a film about the romantic adventures of grandmother Helena (Anna Seniuk) and Mr. Jan (Artur Barciś) – this film couple had the most promising on-screen chemistry. Netflix, if you’re looking for an idea for a sequel, look no further.