June 7 - Day of the Wacko
The day of June 7 is marked in the history of world cinema by several significant, from the point of view of FilmGourmand, events. In chronological order:
On June 7, 1953, the Czech Cinderella was born - Libushe Shafrankova.
And we immediately have to recall that two days after the 68th birthday of the Actress, a serious, prolonged illness, with which the "princess of Czechoslovak cinema" fought for many years, got the better of her. On June 9, 2021, the actress passed away.
On June 7, 1960, the wonderful Soviet and Russian Actress Tatyana Drubich was born.
On June 7, 1984, Ivan Reitman's Ghostbusters premiered in Westwood, California.
Past publications of FilmGourmand have been devoted to these events. Today's publication is dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the release of Marek Koterski's film "Day of the Wacko". The film was released in Polish cinemas on June 7, 2002.
I have to say right away that the film "Day of the Wacko" is a very rare case for FilmGourmand. Namely, I have no personal opinion about this film. And there is no it because I could not watch it for more than 10 minutes. The reason is the overwhelming amount of dirty swearing. For 10 minutes of watching my ears which are far from tender and accustomed to a lot of, as they say, curled up into a tube. I thought that maybe it was a special translation. We have translators who consider it a special chic to translate ordinary speech into obscene language, from which "riffraff enjoys." But no. After reading a certain number of reviews for this film, including Polish professional and English- and Russian-speaking non-professional critics, I realized that it was not a matter of translation. Dirty swearing in this film is its "trademark". We could say it's a cornerstone of the movie.
And from these reviews, I learned that this film is the most truthful mirror shown to the Polish society. And this society, judging by those who surround the protagonist, consists of idiot students, deceitful politicians, bitchy wives, despotic mothers... And the protagonist himself is an embittered and insecure intellectual loser. In short, from the reviews I read for this film, and the rave reviews, I realized that the theme of the film is far from new. Surely, any cinephile, if he tries, will be able to recall many works on a similar topic. And for sure most, if not all, films on a similar topic did without a dirty swearing.
As a result, one involuntarily comes to the conclusion that the main artistic device by which Marek Koterski, the scriptwriter and director of "Day of the Wacko", achieves this highest degree of truthfulness is unrestrained swearing. It turns out that if you remove the obscenity from the film, then only boredom, depressive mood and ... a few jokes will remain. However, I repeat that these impressions of mine are built solely on the reviews I read, since I could not force myself to watch the film to the end. It is possible that someone will be able to convince me that this film, even if you throw out all the obscenities from it, is a worthy work of art.
The film did not receive a single nomination outside of Poland. Although it was shown as many as seven international film festivals. However, at home, at the Polish Film Festival in Gdynia, the film was awarded the main prize. At the same time, 418 thousand people watched it in Polish cinemas, or just over 1% of the total population of the country.
At the same time, 70% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users rated this film from 8 to 10. Thanks to this indicator, Marek Koterski's film "Day of the Wacko" was rated 8.06 by FilmGourmand, which allowed it to take 639th Rank in the Golden Thousand.
