Black Thursday (Czarny czwartek)

A Nordfilm and Agenja SET production. (International sales: Kino Swiat, Warsaw.) Produced by Kazimierz Beer, Miroslaw Piepka. Executive producer, Beer. Co-producers, Marian Bobrucki, Henryk Bobrucki. Directed by Antoni Krauze. Screenplay, Michal S. Pruski, Miroslaw Piepka.With: Michal Kowalski, Marta Honzatko, Cezary Rybinski; Marta Kalmus-Jankowka, Wojciech Pszoniak, Piotr Fronczewski, Witold Debicki, Piotr Garlicki.Veteran helmer Antoni Krauze's "Black Thursday" is a potent docudrama re-enactment of a notorious episode in Polish history: the violent shutdown of a 1970 shipyard workers' strike in Gdynia, which resulted in 18 deaths and hundreds of injuries. While not quite as electrifying as the similarly themed and executed "Bloody Sunday," it's still a creditable mix of tense crowd scenes, more intimate drama and archival footage illustrating a situation rapidly escalating toward disaster. Winner of the critics' main competition prize at Montreal, pic won't be an easy commercial sell offshore but should attract some niche interest, particularly in the broadcast realm. After a short prologue set on Christmas Eve 1969, the screenplay leaps forward nearly a year. The Drywa family -- devoted couple Bruno (Michal Kowalski) and Stefania (Marta Honzatko), plus their three young children -- has had a very good new decade so far, having finally gotten off the waiting list and into a new apartment complex with all modern conveniences. The only fly in the ointment is a drastic hike in the price of already scarce food items, which the government deems a necessity but proles find a severe hardship. Pleading for wage raises to meet inflation, the shipyard workers of leading Baltic port city Gdynia ask a local political wonk to give their strike official Communist Party recognition. But he's soon raked over the coals for that by higher-ups who, afraid one strike might trigger similar ones around the country, pronounce it "incompatible with the party line." They sack the low-end politico, then send in the military with orders to stop these counter-revolutionary "criminals" from protesting by any means. A particularly vile tactic lures hundreds of workers to the shipyard with the false news that their demands have been met and shifts can resume. When they -- including Bruno -- arrive, they're shot at and pummeled by army, police and militia. More bloodshed ensues when the survivors march to the city center bearing the dead. This grim chapter caused such widespread outrage that it is credited with playing a major role in the Solidarity Movement's founding a decade later. Large-scale scenes of panic and violence are vivid; with so many shootings, one might think the body count would have been even higher than it was. Human interest is maintained via emphasis on several individuals, from a student passerby dragged into fatally abusive custody to the party chiefs who reluctantly bend to the will of the shrillest ideologues among them. Pic takes care to note that many military and police personnel were against the orders, but too fearful to disobey them. In the end, "Black Thursday" chooses to focus too much on the Dwyers as our primary identification point, letting Stefania's histrionic distress over her husband's disappearance dominate the last act. Though her travails, too, are fact-based, they turn the pic in a more conventional narrative direction than the earlier, wider-canvas progress intercutting staged and archival materials. It doesn't help that Honzatko's turn isn't the film's strongest. Otherwise, perfs are solid, as are pacing and technical contributions. The somber palette of Jacek Petrycki's lensing sets the tenor for aptly gritty design work, while Michal Lorenc's string-driven score excels with furious cello passages during scenes of mass chaos.Camera (color), Jacek Petrycki; editor, Rafal Listopad; music, Michal Lorenc; production designer, Zbigniew Dalecki; costume designer, Anna Grabowska; sound, Miroslaw Makowski; casting, Krauze, Bartosz Paduch, Patrycia Krauze. Reviewed at Montreal World Film Festival (competing), Aug. 22, 2011. Running time: 105 MIN. Contact the Variety newsroom at news@variety.com

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