FRONTPAGE MAGAZINE - Danusha V. Goska - FEB 17, 2023
A new film depicts one man standing against Soviet Communism.
Now here’s an opening scene you will not see any time soon in a mainstream American film. First, darkness and silence. Next, the creak of a rusted metal door crashing open. A sliver of dirty light sighs across a filthy floor. Amidst what might be stains of blood, urine or feces on this concrete floor is the emaciated body of a naked man. His flesh, the floor, the light, all are sepia-toned, as if in a time-yellowed painting by an old master. This is not a crucifixion portrait; the man is horizontal on the bare floor, not vertical on a cross, but clearly, he is being martyred. The man’s head rises from his arm, which he had been using as a pillow. He gasps for air. He blinks. He has been in darkness so long that light, a gift of which he has apparently been deprived for a long time, is more than he can take. He shields his eyes. He looks down.
Two thugs drag the naked form down a dark hall. In the distance, there are muffled screams. The naked man’s flaccid form is handcuffed to a wooden slab. A bucket of cold water splashes over him. Another man, this one faux jolly and wearing an ostentatious coat with wide, shearling lapels, greets his victim. The smiling interrogator in the pimp coat asks for information. The handcuffed man says nothing. The interrogator tells the two thugs, “Manicure.” A thug turns to a table well-stocked with tools. A door closes. Wrenching screams.
The man receiving the “manicure” is Antoni Baraniak (portrayed here by actor Artur Krajewski.) Baraniak was a Polish, Catholic bishop. His torturers were communists.
Bishop Antoni Baraniak “was imprisoned for three years … He was interrogated 145 times sometimes for several hours in a row. He had his fingernails pulled out and was often held for many days naked in a freezing cold cell full of feces. In spite of cruel tortures he never broke.”
Young Americans today might think of “Uncle Bernie” Sanders, who promises them free college, no strings attached, when they think of communists. If they ever saw movies like Prophet they might understand communism differently.
Prorok, or Prophet is a Polish-language film, with English subtitles, that had a limited release in the United States on November 15 and 17, 2022. Prophet depicts the decades-long conflict between Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski and Polish communists who operated under the control of the USSR. Prophet was directed by Michal Kondrat, and the screenplay was by Katarzyna Bogucka, Johanna Dudek, and Karolina Slyk. The film is in color and the runtime is a bit over two hours.
Prophet focuses on Wyszynski’s life between his 1956 release from communist internment and 1978, when Karol Wojtyla was elected pope. There are many scenes of Wyszynski facing off with Wladyslaw Gomulka, First Secretary of the Polish United Workers’ Party of the Polish People’s Republic. Prophet argues that were it not for Stefan Wyszynski, and his understanding of Catholicism, Soviet communism would have had a much easier time of it in Poland, and, thus, in all of Eastern Europe. Poland was “the second largest country in the Warsaw Pact in terms of area, population, and military capacity.” Without Wyszynski, this film implies, communism might not have fallen in 1989.
Poland’s Catholicism has often been cited as a force that helped to bring an end to the Soviet Empire. Poland’s Catholicism might have been much less of a cultural force had it not been for Wyszynski. Scholar Radoslaw Gross argues that Poland was becoming more secular after WW II, and Wyszynski’s efforts, efforts that are dramatized in Prophet, reversed that secularizing course. In Prophet, Wyszynski says that if his plans for spiritual renewal in Poland are successful, a “strong moral force” will present Polish people with an alternative to communism, and communism will fall on its own. He says that without that “strong moral force,” Poland would be like Hungary or Czechoslovakia. Both countries were both less free under communism, and also less Catholic.
In Prophet, Wyszynski’s vision is not a of a dramatic, apocalyptic battle, but, rather, day-to-day, patient, unglamorous, hard work and commitment. “We don’t need heroic deaths in the name of love,” says the film’s Wyszynski, “but rather we need heroic work for the sake of our beloved homeland … I want this to take root in the soul of each of you like a seed in the ground. It must grow and bear fruit.” The metaphor of sowing a seed and waiting for harvest is used throughout the film.
In addition to Wyszynski’s headline- and history-making negotiations with communist powerbrokers, Prophet depicts Stefan Wyszynski the man, who was known as “the worker priest” for his commitment to and engagement with average people, including blind children, workers, and farmers. Intertwined subplots involve Magda, a wife and schoolteacher; Kazia, a street urchin and shoplifter; Janek, an “artistic” filmmaker; a priest who betrays Wyszynski to the communists; and “The Eights,” a clandestine group of Catholic women who keep the dissident presses running.
Prophet is emotionally engaging, aesthetically pleasing, and informative. I watched it three times, and each time I watched, I saw more to value.
Because I’m a Polish-American and Catholic, I wanted to know what someone not of my heritage and faith would make of this movie. I asked Otto Gross, a German-American Protestant, to watch it. I told him nothing about it. He wrote to me, “It’s a great movie. It’s important. It will be a hard sell to American audiences because there are no car chases and no sex. It wasn’t fluffy. It’s what people need to see.
This movie is not just about the past. It’s about now. About propaganda, about attempts to manipulate the public, about power. It’s about stubborn, unbending belief in false utopias and the evil people do in support of those false utopias. The film depicts the power of Christ flowing through human beings in a bad situation.”
I was happy to learn that not just Polish viewers can find much to value in Prophet.