Stop me if you’ve heard this one before! During a war, a group of soldiers is taken prisoner and must attempt to escape from a POW camp under the watchful eye of a sharp—and, as tradition dictates, ruthless—guard. The prison-break war film is such a well-worn subgenre that every new entry must clearly justify its existence.
Gorky Resort attempts to do so through three main gambles. The first is that, unlike the unambiguous situations found in many similar films, escape is neither unequivocally heroic nor guaranteed to lead to salvation. The Polish soldiers, caught between Russian and German forces during World War II, repeatedly question the very purpose of escaping, fearing that the Germans might receive them even more brutally than the Russians. The film builds a dynamic game of influence and persuasion, lies and rumours, promises and second-hand information, constantly undermining any sense of stability that might emerge.
Against this unstable backdrop, Gorky Resort chooses to anchor its narrative in its supporting characters, creating a large and dramatic ensemble: tactless officers now forced to join their subordinates in the struggle to escape; a female pilot surrounded by imprisoned men and therefore living in constant uncertainty; and a Jewish soldier unaware of what awaits him on the other side of the front lines.
The film’s second gamble is hidden in its very title—a playful attention to language itself. From Stalinist obsessions with renaming and redefining words to the linguistic barriers separating prisoners and guards, language becomes a source of both comedy and tension. Once exposed in different contexts, these barriers can be genuinely amusing or deeply unsettling. That tension erupts into fresh action sequences reminiscent of 1917, as well as emotionally and politically charged conversations that carefully trace the line between personal experience and historical significance.
The third gamble lies in the fact that, far from being a monster of cruelty, the camp’s “resort” manager is the charismatic Zarubin (Aidan Gillen), a cultured polyglot full of promises and charm. Living in the camp alongside his son, Zarubin repeatedly attempts to lure the gifted pianist-soldier Grabowski (Jakub Gierszał) toward the communist regime, constantly oscillating between a disarming smile and a barely restrained capacity for destruction.
This is hardly the first role of its kind for Gillen, who is well known for portraying manipulative and highly dangerous characters, from the charismatic Petyr Baelish—better known as Littlefinger—in Game of Thrones to Aberama Gold opposite fellow Irishman Cillian Murphy in Peaky Blinders. The Irish actor began his career at the age of fourteen and has worked with numerous acclaimed directors and performers, earning recognition for antagonist roles that, as he has said, allow him to explore aspects of human nature he would never embrace in real life.
Screenings:
Tuesday, June 16, 8:30 PM / Florin Piersic Cinema + Q&A
Wednesday, June 17, 9:45 PM / Iulius Park Open Air
An article by Șerban Mark Pop