Red-125 Pan Tadeusz (1999) is a Polish film that was co-written and directed by Andrzej Wajda. The film is a historical romance, based on conflicts between two families, and also within the ranks of Polish patriots.The movie is set during a period when Poland had been divided between Prussia, Russia, and Austria. There wasn't a country called Poland. One of the internal divisions within Polish patriots was whether to cooperate with Russia, or whether to support Napoleon as a liberator.There's a story within that story. One family member was shot by a member of another family. They have sworn eternal hatred. And, like the Montagues and the Capulets, the son of one family is in love with the daughter of the other family.Some reviewers have said that only Poles and Lithuanians can understand and enjoy this movie. I disagree. Non-Polish viewers like me may miss some of the subtleties, but the basic plot lines are clear enough. Wajda was a genius, and this film demonstrates the wide range of his abilities. He can write about grim post-WWII Poland, but he can also direct a large, sweeping epic. We saw Pan Tadeusz in 35mm at the wonderful Dryden Theatre at Rochester's George Eastman Museum. It was presented in collaboration with the Skalny Center for Polish and Central European Studies at the University of Rochester.This film has a terrible IMDb rating of 6.1. Did the people watching it see the same movie I saw? Possibly they saw it on the small screen, where it won't work as well. My suggestion is to ignore the low rating and try to find Pan Tadeusz and watch it. You won't be disappointed.

Shalotka I don't blame any non-Polish viewers for being confused or simply bored. Not at all. At the moment I'm even trying to imagine how it feels watching this picture without being able to refer anytime to the knowledge of the book and the cultural background. I guess it makes you feel lost and empty-headed.First of all, the screen play was created in a very unusual way. The dialogs were not written, but extracted from the poem, some of them being full rhyming lines and some only parts. Of course most of the meaningful and informative pieces were in the narrative section of the poem and somehow didn't make it to the screen. I'm all for "show not tell", but "don't show, don't tell, everybody knows it all from school" is not the top shelf of movie-making to me.All that is shown is pretty people, pretty costumes, pretty interiors, pretty nature. Definitely pleasant to see for anyone who likes pictures with historical settings and would like to get to know something about the life in a particular time and place.The movie really works only for people who have read the poem and have been taught about its historical background. After such preparation they can enjoy this multimedia reconstruction of the characters and places from the book, because that's rather what it is to me. Indeed, all the actors are good, music memorable and all the details nicely done, but this production really lacks the cinematic backbone and something that would allow it to be a movie on its own.

denis888 Adam Mickiewicz is not only a Polish treasure. Thanks to Russian genial poet Alexander Pushkin, he became known in my homeland as well. What he wrote appealed to all the people. Such themes as home, Motherland, love, loyalty, bravery, war and peace are clear and true to all of us, be we Russian, Polish, American or Jewish. Andrzej Wajda has managed to fix this masterful poem, Pan Tadeusz, telling about the Napoleonic war times and the conflict between Polish who supported Buanaparte and Russians who fought him. Love story is another theme here and thus the Poet interwove all those in his intricate poem while the Movie Maker brought it all on to the screen. And it worked! When you hear those impeccable poetic lines spoken by the whole constellation of Polish actors - such as Boguslaw Linda, Marek Kondrat, Andrzej Seweryn - plus a great Russian film star Serhey Shakurov - you cannot but feel an immense pleasure. This is a very aesthetically beautiful movie, rich in costumes and in nature. Highly recommended for all who love poetry and excellently cut films.

David_G_Young Andrzej Wajda has taken a masterpiece in one genre (poetry) and not only done justice to it but created a masterpiece in another genre (film), one which did not even exist when Mickiewicz wrote the poem 166 years earlier.The actors are mainly well-known faces in Polish cinema and yet all rise above the stereotypical images many of the audience have of them. The greatest example of this is Boguslaw Linda as Robak the Priest. In the most moving scene in the film he gives the performance of his life.The harmonious blend of Wajda's direction and Wojciech Kilar's score is a sensual feast. It is a film which impresses a profound sense of beauty to such an extent that one could appreciate the sheer art of the film without even having to understand the language (I cannot vouch for the quality of the sub-titles in English as I saw it in its original version).If you only see one foreign language film this year, make sure it is this one.