Customer Reviews

Krzysztof Zanussi - And a Warm Heart (Serce na dloni) Region 2, PAL

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Serce na Dloni (And a Warm Heart) is about two men with very different situations. One is a wealthy gangster named Konstanty (Bogdan Stupka). He has everything money can buy but has problems with his heart, which is something that can't be bought. The other is Stefan, a young man who is physically healthy but he doesn't want to live because he doesn't see the point of going on. They are quite opposites and strange fate has it that their meeting is in the best interest of both of them.

This film is a drama with a balance of details that come together nicely. Stefan is pretty dejected when his girlfriend goes to Ireland, perhaps for good. He is a kind person but is poor. So in self-defeat Stefan decides to try suicide and doesn't have much luck at it. Konstanty has his goons try to help Stefan kill himself, but they don't tell him it is because they need his heart for a transplant. As you can imagine, there is a lot opportunity for humor here, which adds to making this movie enjoyable.

Of all of Krysztof Zanussi's movies, Serce na Dloni is one of my favorite. It is an uplifting story as the underlying messages concern second chances and having a change of heart. Serce na Dloni has a cast of very well know actors that also includes Krzysztof Kowalewski and Borys Szyc. Doda, the popular singer, makes a cameo in which she sings a song. The great story and acting is enhanced by its captivating music, which is by my favorite composer Wojciech Kilar. Serce na Dloni is one of my favorite Polish films of 2008 because it is fun and draws you in with its great story.

Krzysztof Zanussi, (born 17 June 1939 in Warsaw, Poland) is a Polish producer and film director. He is a professor of European film at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland where he conducts a summer workshop. He is also a professor at the Silesian University in Katowice.

Zanussi studied physics at Warsaw University (Uniwersytet Warszawski) and philosophy at the Jagiellonian University (Uniwersytet Jagiellonski) in Kraków. He is the director of the Polish Film Studio TOR and has received several prizes and awards, including the David di Donatello Prize of the Accademia del Cinema Italiano, the Cavalier's Cross of the Polonia Restituta Order, and the Cavalier de L'Ordre des Sciences et Lettres.

He graduated the Lodz film school with Death of a Provincial (1966), which won an award at the Venice Film Festival. He emerged as a director/screenwriter in the late '60s and early '70s, primarily working for Polish television, until the '80s, when his association with the Solidarity movement forced him into exile in West German and Swiss productions. One of his films, The Catamount Killing (1974), was shot in English, and his work since the mid-'80s has seen wider international financing and distribution.

Krzysztof Zanussi has written On editing an amateur film (1968), Discourse on an amateur film (1978) and the memoirs, memoirs Time to Die (1999). He appeared as himself in Camera Buff (1979), a film about an amateur film maker, directed by his friend Krzysztof Kieslowski.

Zanussi's work is defined by its devotion to ideas at the expense of emotionalism, and intellectualism without overt passions, which did not prevent his fall from grace with the government during Solidarity's temporary defeat in the mid-'80s.