Reviews (7)

A mirror image to the Pianist
Possible spoiler herein...
Better than the Pianist? Tough call, but yes in many ways. Polanski is definitely better cinematically, but Wayda, from Holland's script, renders human relations more finely. Probably its biggest weakness is the choppiness between plot lines. For me, the Poles definitely lead the way on cinematic treatment of the Holocaust.
Szpilman was aloof, and Korczak fully engaged, and their trajectories diverge. Korczak was a world renowned orphanage director and pediatrician, whose radio show was massively popular among all Poles before the War. This meant he was given every chance to escape safely, and walk away from his hundreds of Jewish orphans in the Jewish ghetto; but, instead, his absolute devotion to giving his orphans some semblance of childhood drove him to "deal with the devil himself." On the other hand he knows that the children will have to deal with death at an early age, and he is committed to giving them appropriate comfort and emotional tools. Perhaps the most humane treatment death and childhood in film. It also points to the conflict in impossible situations between those remain dignified and steadfast to humane ideals and those who resist with violence.
The film could be pedantic, but Wojciech Pszoniak (Korczach) is a toned-down, serious version of Robin Williams (close to Oliver Sacks in Awakenings). This gives a much more honest (and probably more loving) approach to helping children to face hardship than "Life is Beautiful."

Korczak, my hero, the reason why children are understood.
I love Korczak, I love the person. I have read some of his works, and I wonder how he understood the child so well. he never had a child of his own but he was the 'mother of 200 children'......

the movie will show you the kind of man Korczak was.....

the story is amazing, and true.

I am so glad this movie was made \

a masterpiece!

The Great and Loveable Teacher Korczak
Every movie Andrzej Wajda made is unique and memorable and many of them are masterpieces. This film made in 1990 is one of my favorites. If you've seen Polanski's THE PIANIST this is an excellent film to see if you want to learn more about what life was like in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Before war breaks out Korczak has already achieved much notoriety. His voice is heard by millions on his radio show and he is recognized in the street by both Poles and Germans alike as a progressive minded humanitarian. He is also a doctor who runs an orphanage for Jewish children and in the opening scenes we hear him on his radio program as he tells just how much his childen mean to him. As soon as the political climate within Poland changes however the doctors program is cancelled and before long the doctor along with his 200 children are marched toward the Warsaw Ghetto. At first the doctor believes the war will be a short one and he confronts the Germans and shames them for their mistreatment of the Jewish Poles. But as events unfold the doctors optimism becomes dimmer and dimmer. It does not take long for people to start dying in the ghetto of starvation and sickness and the doctor soon comes to realize that is very unlikely that either he or the children will survive the war. Death is everywhere around them and the doctor sees all that he can do is try and make this constant contact with death less fearful and so writes plays for the children in which death is experienced as a peaceful thing. These are hard scenes to watch and as moving as anything you will see on film but there is also a beauty to them as they show just how profoundly the doctor feels the childrens suffering. The doctor believes in not just feeding the childrens and caring for them when they are sick but also he believes in making good people out of them and despite the dire circumstances he never ceases acting with the childrens interests in mind, their interests always come before his own. They all admire him and look to him as a beacon of hope. And the doctor does not fail his children. The last scenes of the children walking proudly hand in hand with their Korczak are moving and uplifting even though we know what fate awaits them. The ending of this film has a lyric beauty that I will not give away but I could not give it away even if I wanted to as it really trancends any description of it--you just have to experience it. We feel what the children feel for their beloved Korczak and in a way we all--the best part of ourselves-- marches with them.

The very highest recommendation.

Gripping true story of the Holocaust
This film is different from other depictions of the Holocaust in that in focusses on life in the ghetto. At first, the acting seemed overdone. But as I was drawn into the fascinating true story of Janusc Korczak, a physician and beloved national star of a children's radio program who moved to the ghetto with the children in the orphanage he ran, I began to appreciate the acting style of another culture. Korczak, who was given many opportunities to escape, remained with his children even until the bitter end when they are all deported to Treblinka. The ending (I will not spoil it for you, as one of the other reviewers said too)is absolutely brilliant. Korczak's progressive ideas about the education of children, his pleas to raise money for the orphans, his struggle in the ghetto are all brilliantly portrayed. This film, along with "Schindler's List" (and to a slightly lesser extent, "Europa, Europa") was directed, acted and written in such a way that one word comes to mind: genius.

1 Star for the Video - 5 for the Film
Once again, thanks to New Yorker Video, we are offered a priceless foreign film. So priceless, in fact, that I couldn't afford it. New Yorker often offers videos from their film collection at quite preposterous prices. It's time they realized that the films in their collection are hardly the easiest to locate at your local video store and are best offered to serious collectors - at reasonable prices! ... Read more

Amazon.com

White is the second of witty Polish director KrzysztofKieslowki's "three colors" trilogy Blue, White, and Red--the three colors of the French flag, symbolizing liberty, equality, and fraternity. White is an ironic comedy brimming over with the hard laughs of despair, ecstasy, ambition, and longing played in a minor key.

Down-and-out Polish immigrant Karol Karol is desperate to get out of France. He's obsessed with his French soon-to-be ex-wife (Before Sunrise's Julie Delpy), his French bank account is frozen, and he's fed up with the inequality of it all. Penniless, he convinces a fellow Pole to smuggle him home in a suitcase--which then gets stolen from the airport. The unhappy thieves beat him and dump him in a snowy rock pit. Things can only get better, right? The story evolves into a wickedly funny antiromance, an inverse Romeo and Juliet. Because it's in two foreign languages, the dialogue can be occasionally hard to follow, but some of the most genuinely funny and touching moments need no verbal explanation. --Grant Balfour ... Read more

Reviews (23)

Mouse's revenge
Mouse's revenge

WHITE is one in a trilogy of French films also comprising BLUE and RED.

As the film opens, Polish emigre Karol Karol (Zbigniew Zamachowski) arrives in a Parisian court for his divorce hearing. His wife, the ravishing Dominique (Julie Delpy), is giving him the toss because he no longer satisfies her sexually, although she admits he was hot stuff when they first met in Warsaw.

After the dissolution of the marriage is decreed, Dominique dumps Karol's possessions, all contained in a large trunk, into the car park and drives off. Karol soon discovers that she's also cut off his access to their joint bank account. Karol, now down and out and soliciting handouts in the Paris Metro, absorbs the abuse without any overt sign of anger, even after his ex figuratively pushes his nose into the fact that she's copulating with another man. Karol is the meekest and most inoffensive of men. Let's not mince words; he's a wimp.

With the help of another Pole, Mikolaj (Janusz Gajos), Karol returns to Warsaw by an unusual route. Once arrived, he literally ends up in a ditch. Rock bottom is a hard place.

Karol is an award-winning hairdresser, and he begins working in his brother's beauty shop. Through good luck and a series of shrewd moves unrelated to the hair trade, he becomes rich. And it's also clear that he remains obsessed with Dominique.

WHITE is somewhat less subtle than BLUE, and therefore demands less cerebral exercise on the part of the viewer; BLUE tries too hard to be obscure. Karol is an enormously endearing character, much like a puppy that's been kicked. And, though we don't know what his grand strategy is, we recognize that he has a plan that he's clearly implementing. The lovely Juliette Binoche in BLUE is a more aloof figure as she struggles to recover from a family tragedy, and it's only from close-ups of her face that the audience can infer what's going on inside. WHITE is thus, to this viewer, the more satisfying of the two.

Zamachowski's performance is solid, and Mikolaj is the friend that anybody could hope for. And Delpy's Dominique is eye candy that would drive any sober man on a fevered quest.

It's said that revenge is a dish that's best eaten cold, and WHITE suggests such a meal. The very last scene strongly implies, however, that Karol ultimately lacks the requisite dispassion.

The most under-rated of the 'Three Colours' trilogy.
'White' is a refreshing improvement on its portentous predecessor 'Blue', a dazzling tragicomedy about an impotent Polish hairdresser, Karol, who is unceremoniously divorced by his Parisian wife, thrown out onto the streets without a sou, a possport or much French. Busking on the Metro, he meets a fellow Pole, the lugubrious Mikolaj, who smuggles him back to their home country. Determined to exact revenge on his wife, Karol begins to trade very profitably on the black market.

Maybe it's because Kieslowski is back in Poland, but 'White' is a much 'lighter' film than its predecessor, not in the sense of insubstantial, but in the director's relaxing the grip of his elaborate style, allowing his effects emanate from his story, his wonderful characters and the Polish landscape overlooking the post-communist embrace of (crooked) Western capitalism. Though still glossy compared to his earlier films, the relentless striving for poetic preciosity that marred 'Blue' is checked. Perhaps the return to Poland allowed Kieslowski to make an authentically East European film, a kind of absurdist shaggy dog story, its black comedy aching with anguish. The almost-ridiculous, little-man clown-hero could have bumbled from Gogol or Kafka (or silent cinema?), rumpled, besuited, a bit roly-poly, self-important despite being victim to a fate with a very sick, humiliating sense of humour - his admiring gaze at one of the film's many pigeons ends with dirt sliming down his shirt, just before a court appearance; the bank teller who cuts his frozen credit card is suitably, bureaucratically, inexorably faceless.

The film's comic tension emerges from the disparity between the character's unintentional individuality, his being made seem eccentric because of the unfortunate things inflicted on him, and others' reaction to him; and his dehumanisation, both comically, as he is smuggled by suitcase to Poland, a devalued commodity fetish, only to be purloined by airport thieves, and, more bleakly, in the hardening of his soul as he becomes more successful at being a capitalist - the ironic message of 'White' seems to be that money and power is the key to sexual potency. Karol's natural self was deemed a social failure, so he has to play a part, even if it risks killing his soul, even if he must play a corpse, become his own ghost though he tries to assert the primacy of his body. His progress is symbolised in the film by the importance of language (translating, interpreting and misunderstanding), with epiphany only possibly with its transcendence in a physical, non-verbal communication, perhaps the human equivalent of what Kieslowski tried to do in his films, reach viewers through pure cinema.

Like 'Blue', and all his films, 'White' is structured around recurring and reconfigured imagery - birds, suitcases, glass, statues, combs, 'lucky' coins, snow etc., - but, again, because they belong to the story's world, rather than being imposed on it by a style, they seem much more effective.

'White' isn't perfect - the plot is damaged by nagging implausibilities, and the film certainly dips in the second half, but that's inevitable after the fleet comic energy preceeding it, swept along by the tango melodies of Zbigniew Preisner's score, a welcome contrast to the bombast of 'Blue', and again more rooted to place. Once again, Kieslowski's irony, his play with viewpoint and fantasy, suggests we don't take his images or plot developments at face value.

The power games we play
A story about the power games we play, it pits Karol Karol, a polish hairdresser, against his ex-wife Dominique. The story begins in France, where Dominique is on home ground and controls the situation : she begins setting fire to her own salon, getting the police on his tail. Left with nothing, Karol finds a kindred spirit and manages to smuggle himself back to Poland in a suitcase. There, he works at his father's salon and manages to get back on track.

The theme of equality, second word of the French slogan, is evident here perhaps as a statement that equality does not reflect reality, and that we are engaged constantly in a search for the upper hand, and that life is for the opportunist. This may be seen as either pessimistic or itself an opportunity, depending on your view of life.

Stark "White"
White can be pure or empty, bleak or beautiful. And "White" is also the second volume of Krzysztof Kieslowski's "Three Colors Trilogy," a witty and sharp tragicomedy about revenge. It's also the weak point hanging between the melancholy "Blue" and vibrant "Red," with its less likable characters and more unbelievable plotline.

Hairdresser Karol Karol (Zbigniew Zamachowski) is being coldly divorced by his beautiful wife Dominique (Julie Delpy) because she is sexually dissatisfied with him. She also strips him of his money and possessions, leaving him playing pitiful music at the subways. What's more, she rubs it in his face that she's now having sex with other men.

Things can't get worse, right? Wrong: Karol goes back to Poland and ends up getting beaten up and robbed. Via some not-so-legal methods, Karol builds himself an impressive fortune and becomes determined to get back at his cold, manipulative ex-wife. Amid a web of killing, seduction and faked death, Karol finds the perfect method to bring Dominique down...

"White" is certainly a successful black comedy -- it's sort of weirdly, freakily funny. Unfortunately, it's also the weakest of Kieslowski's "Colors" movies -- some of the plot devices seem too unbelievable (like Karol shipping himself in a trunk), and the tricks and twists of the plot are a little too much to swallow. However, the twisted love/hate relationship between Dominique and Karol is fascinating, and Karol's revenge is devilishly clever for what seems like a nice, goofy little man.

White is the color of wedding dresses and various other marriage-related things. But here, it's nothing so nice: an anti-color, a space where color isn't. It's snow, it's emptiness, it's colorless, it's passionless. Kieslowski's black comedy is sprinkled with white -- white cars, white skies, white marble, white snow. There's less grace in Kieslowski's direction, but the images he creates are still breathtakingly pretty and subtle. (The "sign language" scene is evidence enough)

Zamachowski has an underrated turn as Karol Karol. He seems like a nice, sweet guy who takes one kick in the teeth after another, kind of like a lost puppy. In a word: Loser. In another word: Wimp. Then he shows his dark side -- one that, on the outside, nobody would think Karol had. And Delpy does a lovely job making Dominique into a malicious schemer, without making her two-dimensionally nasty.

This droll dark comedy is a bit flawed, but it shows Kieslowski's unmistakable style and wit, and the acting is nearly impeccable. Call it a portrait in "White."

"Home at last!"
Krzysztof Kieslowski's second entry in his "Three Colors" trilogy is filled with less dread than its predecessor "Blue," but that is not to say that "White" is a totally whimsical film. "White" is actually a revenge-tale that has an underlying mean streak in addition to its more comical elements. It is a film that revels in the idea that a man scorned can be just as dangerous as a woman scorned.

"White" traces the journey of Karol (Zbigniew Zamachowski), a hairdresser from Poland. Karol is a simple man who has become despondent over his upcoming divorce in France. Unable to reconcile with his former wife, Dominique (Julie Delpy), Karol returns home curled up in a suitcase and sets into motion a series of events that culminates with him becoming a successful businessman. He uses his newfound wealth and power to reignite Dominique's interest in him, but when she arrives in Poland, Karol exacts his revenge when she unwittingly falls into his trap.

Zamachowski's performance in "White" is a treasure. His Karol is a lovable character whose darkness comes as a bit of a shock when it emerges because of the disarming effect of his more charming side. Yet, this does not mean Karol is sinister. Calling him complicated would be more accurate as the film makes clear that he has mixed feelings over his actions. While he wants to get even with Dominique, he is still deeply in love with her as she continuously fills his thoughts long after they are separated. Such a complicated characterization is a welcome sight amongst the one-dimensional stock figures that inhabit many current films. "White" doesn't have the dramatic impact of "Blue" but is still a worthy continuation of the "Three Colors" trilogy. If anything, it will make you realize that not all people that project a jovial exterior are truly completely jovial inside. ... Read more