William L
A Holocaust film that doesn't rest on the brutality of its setting alone to motivate the plot. Pasażerka focuses on an attempt at psychological manipulation that comes off as painfully cruel but simultaneously relatively feasible under the Nazi regime, with Śląska's Lisa representing the ordered viciousness that defined the party to which she belonged, but also an interesting combination of questionably morality and tortuous justifications that muddy the waters. The film was intentionally left incomplete at the sudden and unexpected passing of director Andrzej Munk, and while that is a touching tribute, the components that are left out are glaring, including the entire 'present-day' context that allows the film's first-person narration. Some good pieces, but they are never sewn together, and you have to consider the final product rather than what might have been.
While I would like to see what this film would have looked like in its completed form, I believe that there was a ceiling to how nuanced and convincing the film could have been, given the focus on an authoritative SS officer attempting to interfere in a genuinely loving relationship in a concentration camp. (3/5)
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
07/02/21
Full Review
Ola C
Masterpiece. What a shame it wasn't finished.
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
12/14/20
Full Review
s r
1001 movies to see before you die. With the unfinished work patched together, I feel that the point is well portrayed based around what still is there. Despite its fiction, it still has a strong voice. Well made and powerful.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
03/31/23
Full Review
Audience Member
The film had been put together, from the unfinished raw materials, by people who wanted to add nothing superficial to the planned but unknown vision of Munk. So there is not only no ending, but much is left open in the plot lines. Surprisingly, this is what makes the film so powerful. Maybe even had Munk finished his film, it would be not much different.
One way to describe the film is by the narrator's words at the end - "it is about crimes committed by people who are still human". As the central part of the film is narrated by a female Auschwitz junior supervisor, we see, in the first person, how thin, or easy to cross, is the line from innocence to crime, how easy it might be to see oneself not as a perpetrator but as a victim.
The "open ending" character of the film is not confusing - it seems logical, consistent, pointing to the terrible freedom we humans have when deciding our actions, fate, responsibility.
The central part of the movie takes part in the Auschwitz concentration camp. The gory reality of that place is shown almost as a sideline, just enough so there is no doubt about enormity of the crime, so there is no forgetting of the real victims, but without numbing the viewer. After all, the true scope of the crime can be only understood by somebody who is still human, still capable of thought and human emotion, who is not reduced to a terrorized witness.
The film, despite being produced well within the era of communist Poland, is untainted by any - then common - communist ideology dictates. So it survives well the test of time. It is also rather untainted by (otherwise understandable) Polish sense of victimhood. While it is a powerful presentation of the incomprehensible reality of the Holocaust, it seems to lay bare much about human frailty and strength anywhere, anytime.
I think this film has a firm place in an even most select canon of works presenting the collective human experience of the WWII for all us to remember.
You may search YouTube for fragments of the film, hopefully the full restored version of the film will be at some point (legally) freely available online, as are available already some other works of Munk from the same studio.
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
01/27/23
Full Review
Audience Member
It was a great attempt.to finish an unfinished movie but wasnt anything spectacular
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
02/10/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Although not finished (due to the director's sudden death), it's a remarkable achievement in the field of war-time dramas. Full of emotions and deep feelings, this heartbreaking tale of a forbidden love in the Auschwitz concentration camp leaves the viewer struck with compassion and affliction. Told in retrospective, by a German passenger on a cruise ship, who sees a woman she thinks she met a long time ago. And when she does, she embarks on a journey into her own haunting memories. Great use of photos and a narrator to replace the blank spots in the beginning.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
02/26/23
Full Review
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