By Serhiy VASYLIEV, The Day
Jerzy Hofman's saga With Fire and Sword premiered simultaneously
and with much pomp at Warsaw's two principal cultural centers, the Opera
House and Congress Hall. Public interest in this motion picture, as in
the recently released screen version of Sienkiewicz's other major work,
Pan Tadeusz, produced by another classical Polish filmmaker Andrzej
Wajda, is tremendous.
Both literary works are included in school textbooks, reflecting dramatic
pages in Polish history and constituting Polish national pride, even embodying
its culture. For Ukraine, the release of With Fire and Sword is
interesting not only as an example of wise filmmaking strategy, when national
cinematography spares little (the picture's budget is some $14 million)
to enter a real competition with Hollywood blockbusters, but also a scandal
that broke out when Bohdan Stupka agreed to act as Bohdan Khmelnytsky.
At the time wrathful domestic critics were prepared to accuse the actor
of capital treason, saying that in Sienkiewicz's epic the Ukrainian national
liberation war is portrayed as anything but heroic. As for Mr. Stupka (he
has seen the end product), he claims that there is not a single anti-Ukrainian
implication in Hofman's movie, and that it is not a political film but
just a beautiful masterfully staged melodrama. Ukrainian viewers will probably
see this with their own eyes when With Fire and Sword is shown in
Kyiv presumably at the Stozhary festival this August or during the ceremony
of opening the Molodist festival in October.
