Customer Reviews

From a Far Country - Pope John Paul II [VHS]

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Filmed by director Krzysztof Zanussi on the eve of General Wojćiek Jaruzielski's crackdown in Poland and released in the first year of marshal law 1981-1982, this film is remarkable as both a political statement and as a statement of faith that set the standard for all later film treatments of the life of Blessed Pope John Paul II. Filming on location in Kalwaria, Kraków and Oaewięcim (Auschwitz), Poland, Zanussi interweaves documentary film footage from the German and Soviet occupation of Poland at the beginning of World War II, the Nazi terror including the Ghettos up to 1942 and the SS death factories thereafter, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943 and the Warsaw Home Army Uprising a year later, and post-war film of the Stalinist Peoples Republic of Poland and film clips of Cardinal Archbishop Karol Wojtyła who would leave Poland for two Papal conclaves and return as Pope John Paul II. Set design and special effects are astonishing, and exemplify the flowering of Polish cinema during the post-Stalinist era and during the infancy of the Solidarity trade and national union just leading which elicited the Communist reponse through marshal law. Zanussi will go on to use some of the footage from this film for his 1984 classic, YEAR OF THE QUIET SUN, during the period of ongoing governmental repression following marshal law when directors like Zanussi had to make do with a minimalo budget. Direction and acting of a Polish and British cast in FROM A FAR COUNTRY is superb. Viewers will recognize actors who appear in other Zanussi films and in the films of Krzysztof Kieaelowski. The figure of Karol Wojtyła, 'Uncle Karol' to his former students the Catholic University of Lublin even after his elevation to Archbishopric of Kraków and the College of Cardinals, becomes visually more remote the closer events take him toward the throne of Saint Peter. The audience sees his soul reflected in the life and ministry of his classmate, Marian, a priest of the parish of Nowa Huta and it's Church of the Blessed Virgin of Częstochowa, built against the will of the Communist Polish People's Party which had wanted the Nowa Huta suburb of Kraków to be built as a model socialist workers' settlement--without God and without the Church.

This is an important and beatifully made film. More's the pitty that this particular copy, a Canadian print ostensibly distributed by Legacy Entertainment, Inc., sold by RagDads, makes good on none of the promises printed on the apparently pirated text and graphics of the DVD cover. This is a very poor recording directly from VHS to DVD, complete with skipping tracks, fuzzy to muddy color and contrast, definitely not digitally remastered from the original 35mm film. The audio is very poor monaural sound, not digitally remastered "Dolby Digital" stereo. The disk is formatted into scenes, but, beyond that, there are absolutely no "special features" such as interviews, documentaries, etc. What a disappointment and, for $16.95, what robbery!