BODY

Poland, 2015, 90 minutes, Colour.
Directed by Malgorzata Szumowska.

Body is an unusual mixture of the serious and comic. It has been directed by Malgazorta Szumowski whose films included the story about prostitutes, Elles, and a film about a priest with a homosexual orientation, In the Name of…

At the beginning of this film, a police inspector goes to find a body hanging by the banks of the river in Warsaw. As they continue their investigations, the police see the corpse come alive and walk away. This introduces the theme of the body, life and death, health… And the possibility of ghosts or the dead walking amongst us in a kind of purgatorial experience.

Part of the film concentrates on the policeman, his work, the death of his wife and his seeming lack of grief, from the perspective of his daughter, a big fat and drinking man, smoking, earning his daughter’s dislike, even hatred. The daughter goes to a rehabilitation centre which is run by a widow, a very strict and prim woman, who enjoys her work with the women, role play, eliciting deep screams… And then going home, had strict and regular routines, her affection for an enormous dog.

She crosses paths with the police inspector when he goes to visit the doctor for discussions about his daughter’s situation. We have seen the daughter at home, exasperated with her father, taking an overdose. We have also seen the daughter at a session, role-playing about the relationship of herself with her father, expressing her angers, vocally and physically.

The woman from the institution also has psychic sense, conduct seances putting grateful customers in contact with the dead. Finally, the father and daughter agree to hold a seance in the hope of contacting her mother. Nothing happens – and, Spiritualists would not be particularly pleased, the film ends with father and daughter bonding together in laughing at the failed experience.

1. A blend of the comic and the serious?

2. Title, the dead bodies in the film, police work? The body and its use in therapy, screams, movement, role play, dancing? Large and thin bodies? Bodies well looked after? Bodies neglected?

3. A Polish film, the Warsaw settings, suburban, the railway station, the apartment block, the hospital, the therapy rooms, the dining room? Bars?

4. The musical score, atmospheric, the songs and the focus on the dark? And the song from Carousel, to never walk alone?

5. The tone, the initial hanging, the cutting down of the body, the police work, the man getting all up and walking away?

6. The Spiritualist background, the dead not disappearing after dying, walking amongst us? The Spiritualist conference and the speakers and their explanations, stories? Anna and her trances, her writing? Sensing presences? Seances, the grateful clients? The test with Janusz, the ultimate seance, its failure – and father and daughter laughing (as did the audience)?

7. Janusz, his job, the body found in the toilet, the frantic woman, the mother being reported, the lineup? Anna and her comment about it not happening if abortion was legalised? Janusz – and the apartment, Olga and her eccentricities, the meals and her comment? His spicy food? Olga disliking him, the death of her mother, his lack of grieving, her resenting his being at work? Janusz, his dream that he was screaming in therapy? His drinking, the facts of his grief, fat man, the woman in the apartment and her naked dance?

8. On-the-job, his assistant, going to the toilet to investigate, his observations, the assistant and his writing? Drink, spicy foods? The eerie happenings at home, the door ajar, the music going on, the apartment freezing – and this not happening for the neighbours?

9. Olga, reaction to her father, the meals, clothes, acrobatics, nudity in the kitchen, going her hair? In the therapy with Anna? The role play, her anger at her father, being her father and talking to her? Her suicide attempt, the father cleaning up?

10. Anna, prim, the audience laughing at her at first, the therapy with the screams, the reluctant girls? The job with the hospital? Going home, the enormous dog, feeding it, walking it, taking it shopping, it blocking her TV watching, with her in bed? The therapy roles, the role-plays, the dancing?

11. Olga, with the doctor, staying in hospital? Olga and the food, having to eat before the therapy? Getting out?

12. The details of police work, the various cases, the paperwork? The toll on Janusz? The images of the boy who disappeared – and his possible presence in the lift with Anna?

13. Janusz, smoking on the steps, the neighbour’s complaints, the loud music, getting into the locked apartment, the owner, picking the lock, the money?

14. Janusz, talking with Anna, in the car, her advice about the writing, nothing on the page in the draw, his discovering the page with the writing, agreeing to the seance, nothing happening, Anna snoring, the laughter?

15. A slice of life, ordinary, hard, police work, the spiritualists? And the wry response to the activities of the spiritualists?