Review by
Benjamin Poole
Directed by: Agnieszka Holland
Starring: Jalal Altawil, Maja Ostaszewska, Behi Djanati Atai, Mohamad Al Rashi,
Dalia Naous, Tomasz Włosok
Watching Green Border, Agnieszka Holland's (writing credits shared with
Gabriela Łazarkiewicz-Sieczko and Maciej Pisuk) vivid
refugee-crisis drama, with its intense theatre-of-cruelty presentation,
one might be tempted to dismiss the atrocities depicted within as a bit
much: a pro-refugee propaganda, wherein Manichean representations (the
cold huddled poor of the immigrants/ the enthusiastic cruelty of border
guards) simplify a complex geo-political situation in order to promote
liberal narratives. I mean, brutal depictions such as a pregnant woman
being thrown against a high barbed wire fence to catch upon the steel
splinters, scramble and fall hard to miscarry, would be comforting to sack
off as hyperbole. Because you don't want it to be true to life, to what is
happening right now to certain people in certain parts of the world as you
watch in luxurious safety otherwise (serendipitously, as I write, Pride
Caerphilly is going on outside my window. I've already popped out to see
the parade, all the people wearing rainbows - good fun. In
Green Border, one Iranian lad, heterosexual and married, is, upon pain of death,
fleeing his country due to neighbourhood gossip of gay rumours).
Because, the events depicted in Green Border are happening.
At the start of the decade, president Alexander Lukashenko permitted the
admission of refugees into Belarus: not necessarily as an act of humanity,
but as a way of winding up the EU, a body which Lukashenko rejects due to
various sanctions inconveniencing his dictatorship. The idea is that
refugees - people fleeing political instability, persecution and war -
will enter Poland via the Białowieża Forest (the titular "green border"),
an objective which causes problems for both Brussels and Poland. In
Green Border, the fallout of such political pettiness - the "last European dictator"
boasted that "we used to catch migrants in droves here - now, forget it, you will be catching them yourselves" - is represented via a triptych plot
which in turn focuses upon the refugees making their way through the
treacherous forest, a young Polish soldier charged with preventing their
passage, and an academic who becomes involved with helping them.
Holland's narrative begins with claustrophobic focus on the migrants, and
in-medias-res submersion into the dark forests (the monochrome
cinematography of Tomasz Naumiuk adds a harrowing, documentary
layer), and the struggle against their harsh elements. There are children,
old people and pregnant women; all scared, tired and starved. We see the
cruelty at the border, both in the ultimate refusal of entry, but also the
straightforward brutality of the Polish guards: at one point a soldier
smashes a flask and throws it to a spragniony migrant. As the poor guy
chokes on the broken glass, another soldier looks on in incredulity: how
did we get here? Poland is apparently fuming with its portrayal in the
film, but Holland steadfastly argues that the representations are
carefully researched and rooted in reality. In her seventies, Holland is
not only a masterful filmmaker (note how the shots fluently move from
objective tableaus to intimate, handheld terror, along with the compulsive
pacing of the film's near epic length), but one who is still deeply
motivated. Green Border is a film which is driven not only
by a sense of disgusted injustice, but an unflinching purpose to examine
the human responsibility of this ongoing context.
Thus, Jan (Tomasz Włosok) is a young soldier with a pregnant wife.
His daily briefings consist of spurious vilifications of the people at the
border. He is told that they are "live bullets," that they "blow smoke in
the eyes of children to make them cry’." It's a bit "they insist on being
placed at the Captain's Table," but not funny at all: being a solider
means a hundred percent assumption of the given ideology, and, Milgram
militarism aside, if you turn on the TV at any given point in the UK atm
you'll see a dangerous, milkshake splattered gobshite loping back from a
failed attempt at paydirt in the USA spouting similar nonsense. People
believe it - scapegoats give us an identifiable villain. Although, as Jan
experiences a full-on reality which contrasts the dogma, it might turn out
that he isn't too far gone... The film gives yet further hope via Julia
(the striking Maja Ostaszewska), a therapist who falls into
activism: living on the border, she witnesses the death of a child, which
understandably radicalises her. As she is victimised by the authorities
Julia's narrative is one of compromise and paranoia, wherein she
experiences another form of persecution.
Now envisioned as "the enemy" in this conventionalized framework, Julia is
stripped by police, chased down, forced to explain her whereabouts when
she is driving. These are portrayed as actions which are lazy enactments
of authoritative power, a dynamic which has characterised this area.
Green Border seems to suggest that this cruelty, a willing
cleave to ideology, is a way of abdicating responsibility. Why else would
soldiers so automatically beat children and pensioners? By sublimating our
humanity, we forgo the pain of our actions. To wit, Holland's film has a
recurrent motif of pregnancy, directly reminding us of the next generation
of innocence that will inherit this awful world. Is there hope for the
future? It would seem not. A caption at the end of
Green Border states that "in Spring 2023 people are still
dying at the Polish-Belarusian border."
Green Border is in UK/ROI cinemas
from June 21st.
