Another great movie that fits the category ‘Films I should have seen, but never got to’ is the Venice Golden Lion winner 1984 A Year of the Quiet Sun by the Polish director Krzysztof Zanussi. In preparation for the 2020 Venice Film Festival I revisited the Golden Lion winners since 1946 and was reminded of having failed to see this film so far. Poland has an impressive history as a film country and Zanussi fits well into the list of prominent names like Andrzej Wajda, Jerzy Kawalerowicz, Andrzej Munk and Krzysztof Kieslowski.

Zanussi is known for his erudite, psychological dramas dealing with love, death, happiness, moral sensitivity and human destiny. Is a person entitled to a life of happiness and freedom or does life practice restrict that freedom? Is loss and disappointment inherent to life and cannot be escaped? Can life treat you so that you lose the willingness to be happy? A Year of the Quiet Sun is to me a beautiful, mature film, helping me to reflect on those questions. It is beautifully filmed and told with much restraint, both in action and in communication.

The story takes place in 1946 in a small town in Poland, still torn apart by WWII. People are struggling to pick up the pieces. Emilia, a Polish woman has returned with her old, ailing mother to her homeland. Now they live in a shabby, single room in a bombed-out building. She runs by accident into Norman, an American GI who serves as a driver for the commission investigating war atrocities. Emilia has lost her husband in the war, is in her Forties and does not expect much from life anymore. Norman struggles with his traumatic experience of the wartime in Europe and is not in a hurry to get back. He has no one to go home to. He is not an articulate man. They don’t speak each other’s language. Their romance plays against the difficulties and gloom of that time.

Emilia’s mother is bedridden with an infected leg. Before she dies, she wants to secure a future for her daughter and wants to see her escape the misery and leave with Norman for the US. Emilia will not leave her mother to poverty and a lonely death.

This is a great performance of the actress Maja Komorowska who plays Emilia. Her sad eyes, her weariness, her grief, her courage, her search for small moments of beauty stayed with me long after the end of the film. Both she and Scott Wilson, who plays Norman, are very convincing as two people for whom it is so hard to hope, so hard to believe that life can become better, so hard to find a reason to smile.

And at the end of the film the last fantasy scenes give us a lot to think about in relation to the title of the film. A solemn experience!