Bad Luck

This film is quite similar to Forrest Gump in that the protagonist of each film is a wide-eyed bumbling idiot who finds himself thrown into the midst of his country's most historical moments, naive of the true implications of what's going on around him. Where it differs from Gump is that the story is more a tragedy than a sentimental drama. It's a bit too slapsticky for my tastes, but on the whole the film is certainly humorous enough and the satire is blistering.

A pretty good comedy with political undertones. As is often the case with Polish films, a lot of the politics went over my head. As a comedy, it works quite well. Piszczyk's "bad luck" is largely the result of his own cowardice, deception, pride and duplicity. There's a lot of amusing editing tricks, and Piszczyk's childhood is told as an old-style nickelodeon one-reeler. Kobiela is a very good comic actor.

One of those "look at a slice of history through the eyes of a schmuck" satires, and it's a very enjoyable example of the style. The character is sympathetic enough to carry the film, but not so much that you reflexively take his side, so the various misadventures can each develop their own tone and narrative weight independent of the vessel, while the whole remains well connected. It has the comedic tone down pretty well, which helps.