YUMA B-
Poland Czech Republic (113 mi)
2012 ‘Scope d: Piotr
Mularuk
There’s a back story to this film, well known in Poland
and Germany,
but not the outside world. Set in a
small Polish border town of what was Soviet occupied East Germany, where the
Soviets built a factory on the Polish side filled with Russian workers who
purchased Polish goods, which was a welcomed and thriving business arrangement,
but after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Soviet empire, the
Russians just up and left, abandoning all businesses and commercial trades,
leaving the Polish side destitute, without any money or commerce. A kind of chaos and Wild West lawlessness
intervened, where police presence was all but absent, so gangsters took over,
stealing hordes of commercial goods from Germany, which was the only side that
had anything of value, and redistributed them across the border in Poland for black
market barter, trade, drugs, weapons, or money, a practice known as
“Yuma.” Today, neither country
acknowledges this complicit arrangement between the two nations, as it was completely
illegal, especially the blind eye shown by the border guards, who often got a
hefty portion of the take, a practice that lasted for several years until
security measures improved in Germany. The director spent years attempting to
finance his film, but the Germans felt the subject was “anti-Polish,” while the
Polish financiers balked at the portrayal of Poles as black market thieves and profiteers,
considering it a taboo subject, where the director claimed “Officials in Poland
said I’d never make this film.” In fact,
two weeks before the shoot, the Polish Film Institute backed out, so in
desperation they called the Polish owner of the Las Vegas Power Energy Drink, today
a respectable businessman, but who engaged in yuma during the early 1990s,
recalling it as his early “glory years.”
Amusingly the film opens with a blatant product placement ad, again
recurring throughout the film, which is how the film was financed. They were also fortunate to receive money
from the Czech Film Fund, where the film premiered at the Czech Karlovy Vary
Film Festival.
When the director first met Jakub Gierszal as his lead, he
was too young to play the part. But
after years of searching for money to make the film, he was finally old enough
for the role, where today, according to the director, he is the hottest actor
in Poland. The film opens with a brief 1987 preface,
where with nothing better to do, best friends Zyga (Gierszal) and Rysio
(Kazimierz Mazur) assist an East German (Tomasz Schuchardt) successfully escape
over to the Polish side, but in doing so both friends are subject to a horrifically
devastating ordeal by the chasing military troops. The film jumps ahead a few years where Zyga
is little more than a layabout, an aimless kid with no job, no prospects, and
no future. With an eye on western
symbols, Zyga watches B-movie western 3:10
TO YUMA (1957) playing to a near empty theater that may be forced to close, where
the rousing song by Frankie Laine is heard 3.10
TO YUMA. 1957. YouTube (4:52). Ironically, with the encouragement of his
sexually charged aunt Halina (Katarzyna Figura, Polish Playboy calendar girl from May, 1994, nearly two decades ago), who secretly runs a brothel,
he amusingly takes the 3:10 train from Yuma to Frankfurt, finding it ridiculously
easy to shoplift, starting with small items, like cowboy boots and a Stetson
hat, but eventually with two friends, and the cooperation of Polish border
guards, he is returning truckloads worth of merchandise, literally delivering
the land of plenty to a tiny Polish town that previously had nothing, becoming
immensely popular, like a local Robin
Hood handing out Adidas to
everyone, plundering the shopping malls and jewelry stores of their more affluent
neighbor, literally preening in their extravagance to the tunes of Vanilla Ice’s
“Ice Ice Baby” Vanilla Ice
- Ice Ice Baby - YouTube (4:01).
Zyga is initially driven by his attraction to a local
red-headed beauty, Majka (Karolina Chapko), who remains unimpressed but
shelters the East German in the opening scene, reuniting with him again later
in the film, which draws the ire of Zyga and his friends, now little more than
thugs themselves, venting their hatred against this otherwise decent man,
blaming him and the Germans for actually having the material wealth that they
don’t. Of course this practice escalates until it draws the attention of
bona fide gangsters, complete with a small army, first wanting in on the
action, but soon wanting to take it all for themselves. This portrait of
greed grows ridiculously excessive, as Zyga makes the obvious mistake of
flaunting his wealth and power, literally drawing attention to himself,
changing the entire tone of the film from stark realism to exaggerated
caricature. By the end, this has blown up into a B-movie gangster
western, where without a sheriff the town isn’t big enough for two criminal enterprises
that never learn to share the wealth, eventually fighting between themselves
for the town’s profits. The criminalization of the town is complete, not
only including Zyga’s family and friends, but also the church which sanctions
this activity, as everyone in town benefits from having access to things
otherwise unavailable to them. This exaggerated excess is reminiscent of
the exhilarating anarchy of an Emir Kusterica movie, like Black Cat, White Cat (1998), a rollicking
black comedy with outrageous wall-to-wall, gypsy party music from Goran
Bregović, where Halina’s brothel becomes the local watering hole of the young
punks who like to drink and party themselves, literally basking in the glow of
their self-styled heroism until things start spiraling out of control.
The film was shot in Poland,
Frankfurt, Germany
and the Czech Republic,
where the initial allure of capitalism evokes the “glory years,” a consumer
bonanza depicted as a momentary reverie when life was a free for all of dreams
and opportunities before reality intervenes.
