PEOPLE AND GODS

dir. Bodo Kox, 2020

Polish television series set in occupied Warsaw during World War II. The main, equal characters are two Home Army soldiers, Onyks and Dager, i.e. Leszek Zaremba and Tadeusz Korzeniewski, who manage to escape from a transit camp. When they get to Warsaw, they become members of a unit code-named Pazur. The execution of death sentences handed down by the court of the Polish underground makes them masters of life and death, which is doubly dangerous: on the one hand, every action, even if prepared in the smallest detail, always contains some element of unpredictability; on the other hand, the right to take another person's life gives them a power in which it is easy to lose oneself. They are both like fire and water - apparent opposites, yet complementary like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Dager, feisty and unruly, keeps his nerves in check but tends to dispense justice on his own. He has the grace of a bully and the courage of a madman. Onyx, on the other hand, is the opposite pole. Reasonable, composed, always obeying orders. Although at first it seems that their characters are firmly and clearly defined, nothing lasts forever and in the course of the plot they both undergo a transformation. In the background, we can watch a whole plethora of characters, each of whom adds his or her part to the whole: the families of the main characters, their life-long chosen ones, other members of the squad, the commanders. Relatively most of the humour is provided by three brothers, Warsaw slyboots named after the three musketeers: Athos, Portho’s and Aramis. However, these are not flat and one-dimensional characters - they are not just limited to making fun of themselves on screen, they are also affected by dramatic moments.

The series convincingly conveys the atmosphere of omnipresent horror and terror of the occupation period. You never know who you can trust or whether you will return home when you leave, and an accidental roundup or hitting a German officer in the street will not end with imprisonment in the Pawiak prison or death.

Krzysztof Węglarz and Wenanty Nosul are responsible for the script. The director, Bodo Kox, who comes from independent cinema, approached the subject in an innovative way in the context of other Polish productions on the same subject. It is worth noting the cinematography - unusual perspectives, illusions depicting narcotic delusions or the protagonists' fears. In contemporary cinema, technology offers almost unlimited possibilities, and what we see on screen is the work not only of the cinematographer, but also of post-production work.

Łódź's most important locations:

House of Literature, 17 Roosevelta Street

Members of the Home Army counter-espionage liquidation unit gather in the gate at this address before a planned action. Igo Sym, a Polish-Austrian actor collaborating with the Nazis (played by Lesław Żurek), has been sentenced to death by a hood court operating at the Union for Armed Struggle. Sym's assistant, Stanisław Rzeszot (Sebastian Perdek), visits him just before his execution. Distraught and full of bad feelings, he shows him a threatening letter. Sym, lying in negligee on a luxurious bed in his flat, completely ignores his assistant's fears. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Leszek Zaremba, alias "Onyx" (Jacek Knap), who is in charge of the execution operation, along with three other members of the unit, are waiting for the last of them, Corporal Tadeusz Korzeniowski, alias ‘Dager’ (Dawid Dziarkowski). They watch the entrance to the tenement across the street, where Syma's flat is located. Without waiting any longer, Onyx decides to proceed. So the men cross the street. One of them, disguised as a postman, knocks on the door of the actor's flat, while the other insures him by standing to the side. The landlady opens the door and wants to collect the dispatch from Berlin herself, but the pretended postman says that he will only hand it over with a signature, i.e. in his own hand. He goes inside and closes the door behind him. A moment later a shot rings out. Alarmed by the sound, a man in a German uniform emerges from a neighbouring apartment into the stairwell. However, when he sees that the Polish man covering the operation is holding him at gunpoint, he gives up and retreats to his flat.

Restaurant, 12 Piotrkowska Street

Here, the interiors of Warsaw's Akwarium restaurant are set, where Polish collaborators meet with Germans. In episode 4, entitled ‘The Devil's Cousin’, a shoot-out occurs in the premises. Dager, who is in it, tries to escape through a back exit, but hits a dead end and two German soldiers appear right behind him. Dager manages to defeat them, then changes into a German uniform and calmly leaves the premises.

Gdańska and 1-go Maja Street

At the intersection of the two streets, Dager's (Dorota Landowska) mother is brutally arrested. When a woman walking down the street is hit by a Nazi soldier coming from the opposite direction, she boldly demands an apology. The soldier is merciless towards her - he hits her in the face so that the woman falls over. The German stops the truck and, with the help of other Nazis, pushes her into the back of the car. Dager, standing across the street, witnesses the whole incident.

Later in the episode, the Dager rides a rickshaw down 1-go Maja Street. At one point, he notices a German man walking along the pavement, who was making an inspection that day at the City Cleansing Plant, where the boy works in the accounts department. Without thinking too long, he gets off the rickshaw and follows the Nazi, who turns into one of the gates. This encounter ends tragically for the German.

29 Targowa Street

At this address is the home of a blackmailer, Shamala (Sebastian Stankiewicz). Deceiving Jews, he charges them hefty fees in return for promising to find a hiding place. In reality, he turns them over to the Germans. In the episode First Judgement, Dager turns up at the blackmailer's house under the pretence of arranging business. In reality, he puts poison in the vodka, which the Shamalah drinks. In the process, he rescues a Jewish woman, Róża (Maja Rybicka), whom Szamała was holding at his home.

Księży Młyn estate

Warsaw's Grochowska Street, where in the episode Operation Klosz the Germans carry out an ambush and liquidation of one of the conspirators' headquarters, was arranged in the space of this popular film location. The whole takes place at the height of a former school building.

In the Fatum episode, a photographic atelier has been set up at 10 Księży Młyn, where Onyx is captured