a name:

No Matter How Hard We Tried

TR Warszawa, 2015

Photo: TR Warszawa Digital Archive

Description

The movie version of a tragedy commissioned by TR Warszawa from Dorota Masłowska – one of the most important representatives of young Polish authors. A grotesque story about a broken, pauperized Polish society, that lost the sense of community. The main characters are a grandmother, a mother and a daughter who share their apartment in a Warsaw townhouse with some tenants. Each of them use different language and live in a bubble of their individual imaginations. The performance is a bitter assessment of three generations of Poles: one born before the World War II, one raised in the communist era and one born in the capitalist system. It questions the state of Polish society several years after it regained its freedom, exposes the false messages communicated in the TV commercials, glossy magazines and rag sheets, and confronts the consumer’s dreams with the reality of a family, that can’t afford basic needs. Under the picture of a social destitution and cultural pauperization lays the question about national identity, about something that makes Polish people a community. It turns out, that the only common point of reference is the memory of the World War II and the Warsaw uprising.

In No Matter How Hard We Tried Jarzyna employed for the first time a virtual set design: the apartment is a child’s drawing projected on bare walls. Danuta Szaflarska (1915-2017), cast as a Gloomy Old Woman, was 93 at the premiere and still performed at the age of 100, which made her the oldest active actress in Poland.

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