“When a war breaks out, people say: It won’t last, it’s too stupid. And of course, the war is certainly too stupid, but that doesn’t stop it from continuing,” wrote Albert Camus in “The Plague.” The words of the French writer are still relevant. On February 24, 2022, Russia attacked Ukraine and the conflict continues to this day. War always takes place on two levels. The first is the political establishment, the second is the front – trenches, tanks, movement of troops and civilians. Filmmakers Maciej Ślesicki and Filip Hillesland decided to talk about the human side of the conflict.
IN “People” We see the nightmare of war from the perspective of women. The heroines are Ania, Nastya, Lyuba, Maria and Olena. A teenage girl is looking for her sister, her mother goes to the front to find her son, an older woman loses her husband. There are also blind children from an orphanage left alone, traveling across the country, hoping not to encounter enemy troops. Sometimes the camera takes on the perspective of an innocent, several-month-old child. Thanks to this formal device, we are directly in this nightmare, as the war intertwines their fates. They are in the middle of hell, where blood flows, bones break, people die on the battlefield, die in hospital or starve to death.
And when the convention of a film made within the genre framework of post-apocalyptic cinema works, the plot structure of the story becomes a problem. The next characters, and there are too many of them, get lost in the disordered narrativetheir stories are not told, but only outlined in the context of the battle on the front, Russian propaganda or the cruelty of soldiers. The whole thing becomes a review of human stories, not a deeper analysis of their tragedies. The style of the photos, which changes with each of the characters, also does not help in obtaining a coherent image.
Despite this, the story carries a huge load of emotional truthbecause after all “People” is a manifesto against war. A reminder of the heroic fight of innocent people. The script was based on real events. The creators relied on the accounts of Ukrainians, including: they hired Oleh Obernikhin, a former Ukrainian soldier who is now a psychiatrist who treats Ukrainian soldiers with symptoms of PTSD.
In this respect, the film is as good as documentary films. For example, there is a brutal scene: a portable crematorium, when bodies of the dead are being pushed into the furnace, and the cynical words of the commander of the Russian special unit: “no body, no man”. There are more shocking scenes and each of them kills the viewer’s hopes for a good solution to the situation. Ukrainian and Polish actors played touching roles in the film, including: Oksana Cherkashina, Hryhorii Horobchuk, Tetiana Yurikova, Cezary Pazura or Maria Sztofa.
In war, you live faster, experience more intensely, and forget about the price of life. “People” is an attempt to understand the impact that war has on the human psychethinking, behavior and personality, and on relationships with other people who must face unimaginable decisions with the highest stakes – and both life and dignity are often at stake. Painful and painful cinema.
6/10
“People”dir. Maciej Ślesicki and Filip Hillesland, Poland 2024, distributor: Teraz Serwis, cinema premiere: November 1, 2024.