Het Parool
Wednesday 16 april 2008


It is a classic film genre: the protagonists try to free themselves from the place where they were born and from their fate. Tricks, the second movie by the Polish director Andrzej Jakimowski is set in a Polish town where we always return to the train station. For the six year old Stefek, through whose eyes we see the world, the station, with its trains that come and go, is a place filled with promises of adventure.
He is dreaming of a journey that will bring him beyond the horizon, and he is convinced that he can change fate by playing with his toy soldiers.
His grown-up sister is looking for a different way outside. She is learning Italian and applying for a job at a modern company at the edge of town; a sleek company with a modern parking lot where the manager parks his Alfa Romeo.
The brother and sister have a quest in common. Their father ran away and their mother is alone. Now they are trying to bring the two back together.
Jakimowski made all this into a playful, lighthearted movie set under a bright blue sky - and that's not something you'll often see in Eastern European movies.
A recurrent visual theme is a flock of white doves which turn circles above the town. Even if you're free as a bird, it's still not easy to leave the place where you were born. And maybe it will never happen, Jakimowski seems to be saying, yet he does so without for even one second becoming didactic about it.
At the end of the movie Stefek crawls into a railroad car which starts moving. When he opens his eyes in the morning, the train has just stopped at the station where his journey had started. Like a dove, he has come back to his nest.
The movie scored high in the public vote of the Rotterdam Film Festival. Unsurprisingly, as there are few directors who can bring bygone dreams to the screen with such a light touch.

Mark Moorman, Het Parool