It is a bitter story about a middle-aged man, who hates his life and other people, including himself. Adam Miauczynski, the character known from director Marek Koterski's previous films, is a 44 year-old teacher, who reads poetry during school lessons and later goes home swearing and calling his neighbours' names. The worst pain for him is the next 5 minutes of living. He doesn't accept himself and even everyday contacts with others cause his aggression. Though constantly dreaming of a romantic love, he is not bold enough to make his dreams come true. The desperate Miauczynski personalizes our own fears and obsessions, which have become so visible recently.
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More than a dozen years after it was made, I settled down to watch this highly lauded Polish film and soon wondered what took me so long. "Day of the Wacko" is Polish cinema at its best. It's as if Federico Fellini had made "Jackass, the Movie." Brilliantly played by Marek Kondrat, the main character is a jackass, a bitter 49-year-old man who hates his life. His obsessive-compulsive daily routines, his insomnia, and his contempt for other people, have made a mess of him. He lives in a delusional world in which he is the only sane and rational person. Through his world view, however, comes a well deserved satirizing of the commercialization of Polish life and the vapid individuals who inhabit his world. We end up sympathizing with him, as his son, his former wife, his mother, and all of his neighbors display their absurd normalcy. This is comedy that makes you think.
Even though I've lived in Poland for over a year now, I generally don't watch many Polish movies, especially newer ones, which I've found to be very derivative of American and British films. This movie however is a true gem. A rare film that makes you take stock of your own choices in life. The movie focuses on a day (though actually it has to be more than one day) in the life of Adas, a 49 year old high school teacher from Warsaw who's first words to us are "I'm afraid of waking up", and we soon learn thats not all he's afraid of. Adas is deeply dissatisfied with every aspect of his life. From his noisy neighbors, to his broken family, to the Polish government, to his own inability to climb out of his personal hell. Told mostly through narration voice-over which clues us in to Adas's thought process, the film explores the turmoil of middle age with an honesty and poignancy rare in film. While certainly hilarious in moments, this movie serves up an equal (or greater) amount of melancholy as well, balancing the two aspect, delicately. As Adas passes from compulsion to depression, to denial, to rage, we learn more about him, and come to empathize with him. The most striking feature of this movie for me, was the universality of Adas, and the relate-ability to him. Yes he is Polish, with some uniquely Polish complaints and problems, but he could easily be any middle aged man in any western society. While he's a wacko in his own way, what the movie says is, "aren't we all?", "aren't we all this man in some way?" This movie did for me, what hardly any movies do anymore; it made me think and reflect about my own life and my own choices, and any movie that can do that, deserves praise in my book.
I'm not sure what some get so uptight about nitpicking some small details and missing the whole big picture and the wonderfull moments of the film. I also left Poland as a child in 1979 and one thing I had to live through is bad Hollywood films:P This movie can be crude, but why shouldnt it be. If your life turned out like this you would be extremely unhappy and likelly using rather colorfull words when you reached the boiling point as the main character has. The film is simply art, it had no typical pre-fabricated way of telling the story, it was simply a day in life of an angry man with a life time of regrets and love that he yearned for. It also had some critisisms of Poles in general and I have to agree, sometimes there was to many "me me me" when I have visited insted of "we". I think the prayer at the end summoned it up. Most of all it is a satire, it is taken to extreme in places, thats what satires do, so dont take this to literally, just enjoy and try to understand that it is not you regular moron proof hollywood movie where everything is laid out in front of you and overexplained so the dimmer amongst us dont ask to many questions. To me its one of the best films I have seen in the last ten years, a pleasant surprise.
I left Poland as a seven year old girl in 1981.. no, hang on - first of all, Why is there a man defecating in this film? For all of the intellectual things I have loved about films from the 'homeland', nothing has ever sunk into the realm of BFR (bodily function reduction) without trying to be an educational film on the digestive tract. This screened at the Vancouver Film Festival three days ago and I made the voyage to the theatre feeling stoic and anticipating something momentous... after all, reverence and sentiment is something that runs amongst all of the Poles I know and no, wait - why is there a blisteringly heavy-handed metaphor that includes people playing tug-o-war with the Polish flag, it ripping and (I can't believe they stooped this cliche) BLOOD, yes blood spatters out from where it tears???? Help.. am I too young to appreciate an aging poet's neurotic excretions? I wondered the same thing when I started watching Bridges over Madison County.. will I be able to relate to a mature, ripe and slower-paced perspective on life? In the case of Bridges, I was lured by the universally binding theme of love, kinship and romance, however removed it was from mine. In WACKO, not only did I have a hard time believing the protagonist but all of the supporting characters were caricature cut-outs of things you see in 80s sitcoms in North America: the venomous (and nothing else) x-wife, the apathetic (and disinterested and nothing else) young son, the students who are defined by their flatulence and interest in bodily injuries of their professor. I have to claim philanthropy for every character, not just the women because they are so one-dimensional and the protagonist is simply... boring. None of the details which are supposed to be quaint (his measuring coffee JUST so) resonate because there is so much repetition that you just want to tear your hair out waiting for the director to get to the point. By mid-way through the film, I have to admit to my beloved boyfriend (Zagreb born, UK raised) that this film has none of the imagination nor raw honesty of films like JAK DALEKO Z TAD, JAK BLISKO nor INTERROGATION because it's attempting to do something it considers to be "NEW" (ie. Poles are not historically about going on about mastrubation, crapping, suicide) ... I felt the same as when I went to a theatre in SZCZECIN a couple of summers ago and they did "Natural Born Killers" the stage version. Totally disappointing and unimaginative... I hope that the next thing to hit the circuit does not go where this film dragged the audience through.
