Fantastic!

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

This movie's theme has been done to death. If you've seen one third Reich movie you've seen them all more or less.It was 82 years ago. Who cares! Get some new material already. I am sick of having five new nazi movies (or more) every year!This movie's theme has been done to death. If you've seen one third Reich movie you've seen them all more or less.It was 82 years ago. Who cares! Get some new material already. I am sick of having five new nazi movies (or more) every year!This movie's theme has been done to death. If you've seen one third Reich movie you've seen them all more or less.It was 82 years ago. Who cares! Get some new material already. I am sick of having five new nazi movies (or more) every year!

Obsessed with righting a wrong, a small-time farmer manages to put himself at odds with his family as well as neighbors when his actions threaten to reveal a long-hidden and notorious secret of a little community. His brother, returning after thirty years abroad, gets caught in the turmoil. Uncertain of the magnitude of the emotions they are dealing with, the depth of concealed pain, or even what exactly happened and who deserves the blame, the two brothers struggle as much with each other as they do attempting to make things right. The story is intriguing from the outset and the few actors are capable, yet depth is lacking in terms of dialog, scenery, and events. The characters do not seem as genuine or animated as they might be.

This is a very good movie. Deeply tragic, terribly honest, unbearably truthful, impossibly merciless. he very topic of Holocaust has been closely watched, studied and discussed, but here we do not have the scale of Spielberg's Schindler's List, or bare wound of Polanski's Pianist. Here we see a minor case, nevertheless, not a bit less painful or decent. The story of two Kalina brothers in a small Polish village (which is shown so vividly and so exact) seems to be a bit slow at first, but then the tempo of the film gets faster, the events get more and more tragic, and people become more and more horrible. This is a fictitious village, but the story itself is of Jedwabne origin, with local population taking part in killing all local Jews just to be commended by Nazis. The very fact that the movie was prohibited in some Polish Gminy (regions), and harshly attacked by nationalists shows how very true it is and how precisely it hit the tee. Ireneusz Czop as Franciszek Kalina, Maciej Stuhr as Józef Kalina, brother of Franciszek, Jerzy Radziwiłowicz as the rector, Zuzana Fialová as Justyna, granddaughter of Sudecki, Andrzej Mastalerz as Janusz Pawlak, Zbigniew Zamachowski as police Sgt. Włodzimierz Nowak, Danuta Szaflarska as the elderly herbalistall these actors did a marvelous and very deep performance, and the very core of the problem is shown extremely well. Thye final discovery is so tragic for Kalina Brothers, so bad, so terrible to know, that one of them cannot bear the truth anymore, and the other does what he really has to. The final scene with Jewsish relatives of murdered locals is deeply sad, touching, and really great. I highly recommend this excellent film and commend it 10 out of 10. This is a superb work of Wladyslaw Pasikowski - he did his real best.

I feel sad for the review where one feels attacked and is explaining at length how this movie makes all Polish anti-semites. This is merely silly of course. History doesn't change by denying it. Painful but true, who ever survived the German camps and made it back was to find everything taken from them. It's a part of history and nobody has to be offended when movies are based on our gruesome events. It's no generalization. About the movie: excellent cast, excellent story build up and absolutely worth your time. Even for those not interested in the historical part. While the story unfolds there is a intense sense of claustrophobia as the small town has to let go of generations old secrets. Daring script and great pacing.