The rich ambiguity and artistry of contemporary Polish cinema–Roman Polański, Krzysztof Kieślowski—is mostly ignored in “Born of the Sea,” the Polish entry in the International Competition at this year’s Cairo International Film Festival. Instead, director Andrzej Kotkowski goes for a dull, if well executed, patriotic storyline that, although tethered to the political and financial tumult of 1925, ultimately eschews real conflict or original storytelling.
Krzysztof Grabien is a young and penniless migrant worker who has left his home and studies in order to travel to the seaside Polish town of Gdynia, where he hopes to get a job working on the construction of a dock. Krzysztof’s choice to migrate may have been born out of necessity, but his hairdo—a boyish dirty blond flop—was born out of the heavens.
Krzysztof’s good looks afford him some short cuts. He easily befriends strangers and is able to flirt his way both off his sand bed the first night and into a free meal. It also, unfortunately, lets the writer cut corners; when he locks eyes with a similarly attractive blond girl, Lucka, there is no question where the script is heading. If those two rubbed their blond locks together they could make fire to fuel all of coastal Poland. And, in a way, they do.
Krzysztof also meets Wolodia, a less attractive and therefore more resourceful young worker and polyglot who first helps Krzysztof get a job hawking illegal liquor. Eventually, owing to his mastery of the region’s vital business languages—French, German, and Polish—Wolodia gets himself and Krzysztof jobs with the imported businessmen engineering Gdynia’s new docks, a construction project that promises to bring the sleepy town into the modern age and one that is met with both resistance and excitement from the villagers.
One of the most resistant villagers happens to be Lucka’s father, a basically intolerable sexist and mulish landowner who disapproves of Krzysztof even when the boy finishes his schooling. Apparently the signifier’s of Krzysztof’s imminent success—hair, eyes, height—that are so apparent to everyone else, are lost on the farmer, who hates the migrant workers for both the debauchery they provide in the present and the changes they signal for the future.
While Lucka and Krzysztof’s love progresses, so do the dock and the threat of war. Moments of anti-Polish aggression on the part of German residents—Lucka and Krzysztof dance in a swarm of angry Germans and a table of drinkers begin singing German fight songs, forcing Krzysztof and Wolodia out of the bar—are the movie’s most convincingly tense scenes.
The film is weighed down with obvious symbols. Some, like the heart-shaped chunk of amber encasing a still butterfly that Krzysztof finds buried in the sand and gives to Lucka, appear so suddenly as to be obviously generated solely for their Polishness—deus ex jewelry. The sea laps calmly at the shore or churns loudly in a storm according to the moods of the characters. At a time when the future of Gdynia is unclear, Krzysztof and Lucka have a baby.
The stronger a character’s attachment to the future of the dock town, the more sympathetically the movie treats them. A beautiful restaurateur chooses her home over Paris and an engagement, and moves from being a peripheral character to one of the chosen gang. Those who bet against Gdynia’s success fare less well.
“Born of the Sea” is the lightest kind of historical film, one for which its complicated context is mere backdrop for stock characters to prove their loyalty to their town, whether home or adopted. It ends with shots of modern-day Gdynia with the actors in what could be their 21st century roles—Lucka on roller blades, Krzysztof checking her out. It’s a charming touch, but one that ultimately confirms the purpose of the film as advertisement.
