KSU has been operating continuously to this day. The band was founded in 1977 and is still led by Eugeniusz “Siczka” Olejarczyk, played in the film by Ignacy Liss.
The action focuses primarily on the first, partisan period of the band’s activity. They are young, passionate, and want to enjoy life. In small Ustrzyki Dolne, in the Bieszczady Mountains, they are less bothered by politics itself than by the communist pillory of rules and restrictions. How they should look, behave, dress.
The generational rebellion at that time was rock, punk, blues music, smuggled in from the West, listened to surreptitiously on the radio, brought in illegally on records. For KSU, the greatest inspiration would be punk, the music of screaming and provocation, discovered thanks to a tape cassette with Sex Pistols music smuggled out of London. The boys from Ustrzyki wanted to look just like Johnny Rotten, Sid Vicious and company. They pierced their ears with safety pins, put on chains, looked for leather jackets at the market. Hair gelled, mohawk. This is how Ustrzyki rock, punk rock was born. This is how KSU was born.
In Paluch’s film with good cinematography by Artur Żurawski, one can feel the climate of the young people’s disagreement with the stagnation of the late seventies – up to martial law. The creators note the most important moments in the band’s history, for example a letter they sent, not entirely seriously, to Radio Free Europe with a request to broadcast “the music of free people” on the station. The letter reached its addressees, a program about punk rock appeared on RWE, and a big scandal broke out in Ustrzyki.
Not the only one: the scenes with concerts of KSU musicians, undoubtedly interesting and well-filmed, become a pretext to tell something more about the customs of those times. The Polish People’s Republic fought against the dissidents. Files, denunciations, files. The KSU team had its own investigation, under the codename “Żyletka”, but the accusations were the same as always on similar occasions: anti-state, anti-Soviet, and perhaps intelligence activities. Nihil novi sub sole. After all, we still hear the same accusations in Russia and Belarus. That is why such an important character in the film is played by Piotr Głowackiofficer Majak, a representative of the communist concrete that has been hindering the career of Siczka and the rest of the team over the years.
Wiesław Paluch is not a master of directing skill in the film. The story, as a story about punk rock, is conducted too smoothly, flowingly, without seams. The author of several documentaries and the independent film “Motór” from 2005, places the KSU story within the rules of middlebrow cinema. And in this genre “Idź pod prąd” works quite well. From conflict to success, from romance to intoxicants. Young, mostly still little-known actors play fervently and devotedly. Apart from Ignacy Liss, it is certainly worth paying attention to Bartłomiej Deklew, Wiktoria Kruszczyńska, Zuzanna Galewicz, Maciej Piotrowski and Igor Paszczyk.
The film itself, however, lacks a punk edge: nonchalance and provocation. In the song “Against the Stream” from the band’s debut album, which also gave its title to the film itself, KSU sing: “Never try to go against the flow / Never try to look for reasons / Don’t break ranks / Because you are nothing, nothing / Never try to say no / Never try to look for reasons / An individual is zero after all / You are nothing too / You were not born for this / To look down on the grey crowd / You are a small element / With a number written in your files / Go against the flow! / Go against the flow! / Go against the flow! / Go against the flow!”
I felt that “against the grain” was missing a bit in the film.
6/10
“Go against the flow”dir. Wiesław Paluch, Poland 2024, distributor: Dystrybucja Kinowa TVP, cinema premiere: September 27, 2024.