Edi (2002)

The DVD case for Edi trumpets that it was “the Polish submission to the 2002 Academy Awards”. That’s a rather indirect way of saying it didn’t get nominated, but it sure could have been.

The Foreign Language Film category is one of the many continual embarrassments of the Oscars; while contemporary masterpieces by Wong Kar-Wai and Arnaud Desplechin and Cristi Puiu are ignored in the one category in which they could potentially compete, foreign governments select one film to ‘represent’ them at the Oscars. With some exceptions, the governments tend to avoid anything controversial, edgy, funky, personal, violent, sexy — you know, good — in favor of exactly the kind of bland, heartwarming pap that gets nominated in all the other Oscar categories. It’s a strange way to advocate for your national cinema, but I guess the authorities of those countries figure they have to play the middlebrow game.

Edi, the debut film from Piotr Trzaskalski, is like a soggy loaf of Wonder Bread. It’s so relentlessly bland and flavorless it makes the recent Will Smith vehicle The Pursuit of Happyness seem like a masterpiece of hard-hitting realism. It was obviously made with good intentions, and probably on a low budget, so criticizing it feels a bit like beating up on a small kid. But what can you do? Incompetence is still incompetence.

The title character (Henryk Golebiewski) is a scrap metal picker who lives and works alongside his only friend in the world, a stuttering simpleton named Jureczek (Jacek Braciak). By day, this neo-Of Mice and Men pair drag their wagon through the streets of glum, industrial Lodz, collecting raw materials and junk to be sold for a pittance. They spend their modest wages at a bar, socialize with some other indigent wrecks, and by night retire to the abandoned warehouse where they make their home.

These early scenes are shot in an arty, ponderous manner, with the camera far away from the actors and the interiors bizarrely under-lit. A dirge-like horn-and-piano score hangs over most of the action, only to suddenly break into a tinkly, “Triumph of the Human Spirit” refrain from the Disney vaults when Edi and Juraczek are doing something particularly life affirming. And interspersed in all this are a series of jarring flashbacks (or fantasies) showing two boys leaping off a dock into a vast, black river.

Edi is a homely man of indeterminate middle age — he looks a bit like a thickset Gollum — but we know he has a beautiful soul because he reads books and thinks deep thoughts. His simple friend can’t understand: “Your head is spinning from all those books. What have they ever done for you? Made you richer?”

Jureczek is more focused on the television he finds in someone’s trash, which launches him and Edi into an awkwardly scripted conversation about what they would do if they had a little money. Jureczek would do nothing but watch TV, “so I could see how real people live”. (I’m sorry. Did that metaphor hit you upside the head? Watch out.) Edi is more concerned with reading Romeo and Juliet and gazing poignantly into the middle distance. At other times, he craps out aphorisms like, “What happens now is what’s important, not what happens next” and — my personal favorite — “It’s Christmas when you want it to be” (this one goes over so well it gets repeated later in the movie).

Intersecting with these characters is a teenage girl named, no kidding, Princess (Aleksandra Kisio), and her two bootlegger brothers. For some reason, the brothers can’t go legit and open their own pub until Princess gets a high school diploma, so they hire Edi to use his book learnin’ to help their sister pass her exams. But when Princess ends up pregnant by her secret boyfriend, she panics and tells her brothers that Edi raped her.

They promptly castrate the poor guy — who of course submits to this mutely, because he’s a good, simple proletarian — but don’t actually kill him. Why? “Because someone needs to take care of this.” That’s right, instead of dumping Princess’s baby off at a hospital or a firehouse or a convent, the brothers decide the thing to do is to give him to the man they think raped their sister. Because how else is Edi going to bond with the little tyke in poignant scenes underscored with soft piano music? And how else is the director going to jerk third-act tears when Princess inevitably changes her mind and decides she wants her baby back?

There are an awful lot of plot machinations going on in this short film, and what’s remarkable is how few of them are motivated by believable human emotions. Characters never act the way they would in real life; they act the way they do in made-for-TV movies — in ways guaranteed to maximize audience sniffling. Edi and Jureczek are never anything less than good, noble, kind-hearted individuals. Princess’s brothers (too one-dimensional to even merit names) are never anything more than psychotic, remorseless villains. We never gain any insight into these characters. Who are they? How did they get to where they are? What drives them? They’re just blobs to be manipulated by the director.

Edi is the epitome of all the offensively clichéd working class characters created by well-meaning directors. He’s unceasingly good and passive. He never raises his voice or his hand as the world (and the plot) constantly beats up on him. It’s very easy for a director to elicit ’empathy’ for an underclass character when said character is never anything less than saintly.

Late in the film, we get an explanation for all those arty flashbacks. Turns out they represent the childhood of Edi and his estranged brother, who not only stole the woman Edi was in love with, but somehow also took the entire family estate from him. How did this unfortunate turn of events come about? Never mind. Edi is a Lamb of God.

The DVD comes with several extras: a “Making Of” feature, a commentary track by the director, and theatrical and television trailers. Here’s what’s interesting: the DVD offers no subtitle option for any of these extras, only for the film itself. So if you are desperately yearning for some background information on this film, you’ll have to invest in a Berlitz course in Polish.