Pociąg

Pamiętam, jak na zajeciach z czytania tekstów literackich na anglistyce dr Janusz Semrau z sobie tylko właściwą charyzmą zastanawiał się nad fenomenem podróżowania pociągiem, nad momentem spotkania się w jednym czasie, jednym miejscu grupy nieznajomych, nad potencjałem rozmowy, który z tej przypadkowej konstelacji wynika.

Przyszło mi to wspomnienie do głowy przy okazji oglądania Pociągu Jerzego Kawalerowicza, przedziwnego filmu drogi z 1959 roku, którego akcja toczy się w nocnym pociągu z Łodzi na Hel. W przedziale sypialnym pierwszej klasy spotykają się wbrew swojej woli tajemniczy mężczyzna (Leon Niemczyk), który szuka samotności i spokoju, oraz młoda, roztrzęsiona kobieta - Marta (Lucyna Winnicka). Trafia do męskiego przedziału przez przypadek, kupując w ostatniej chwili bilet od człowieka na dworcu. W drodzie nad Bałtyk towarzyszą im pasażerowie sąsiednich przedziałów, w tym ksiądz, poszukująca przygody mężatka z małżonkiem, jowialna konrolerka oraz zdesperowany były chłopak Marty, grany przez Zbyszka Cybulskiego.

Jest w ich przelotnym spotkaniu subtelna tajemnica, ale też nadzieja. Najpierw razem z pasażerami krok po kroku, rozmowa za rozmową, dowiadujemy się kto jest kim, oczywiście bez rezultatu, bez dotarcia do prawdy. Wręcz przeciwnie - w porywie chwili cały wagon, kierując się pozorami, domysłami i psychologią tłumu, widzi w mężyczyźnie granym przez Leona Niemczyka mordercę, gdy zatrzymuje go milicja. Dopiero przytomna interwencja Marty, która rozpoznaje podejrzanego w człowieku, który sprzedał jej bilet, przywraca honor niesłusznie oskarżonemu. Jeszcze więcej niedopowiedzenia jest w jego relacji z Martą, ich początkowej wrogości, nieprzystępności, która stopniowo odsłania przejmującą potrzebę kontaktu, rozmowy, poznania drugiego człowieka. Dla Marty, poturbowanej przez kolenych mężczyzn, deklarującej wolę życia w samotności, a jednocześnie pełnej nadziei, ufności, ciekawości, jest to niezbędne jak powietrze. Ta tęsknota za przygodą, porozumieniem, kontaktem wręcz buzuje z kobiety z sąsiedniego przedziału, znudzonej mężem prawnikiem.

Pociąg dojeżdża do Helu, natychmiast ginie nastrój zawieszenia, oderwania od rzeczywistości, wyczekiwania, tajemniczy mężczyzna okazuje się lekarzem, na którego na peronie czeka żona. Jego ucieczka nie ma w sobie tyle romantyczności, ile początkowo można by się domyślać - po prostu zapragnął odpoczynku po trzech trudnych operacjach, jednej tragicznie zakończonej. Marta nie znajduje w pociągu niczego ani nikogo, odchodzi plażą w nieznane, ucieka dalej. Jej adorator Staszek nie odzyskuje jej względów mimo swojej desperackiej pogoni. Inni pasażerowie też rozchodzą się każdy w swoją stronę.

Watch him in 2025

Kieron Williamson from Holt (Norfolk) may well be the artist to watch in 2025 when he will reach his 20s. Now, at the age of seven, this precocious child talent has art enthusiasts and dealers sign up in a growing waiting list for his future output. His painting gift, by now concentrated around tender landscapes, is becoming widely acknowledged and his parents begin to adjust their family life and upbringing to accommodate Kieron's spectacular abilities.

Vocab to remember:
1. Small boys aren't renowned for loquaciousness,
2. a nutritionist = dietetyk,
3. precocious = too mature for their age,
4. a child prodigy,
5. He's head and shoulders (= by far) above others.
6. an artist's temperament,
7. to be top of the class in maths,
8. to be all-or-nothing with things you do,
9. I can price it down for you.
10. acrylics, watercolours, pastels and oils.

Shorts blown to smithereens (II)

There were a few unique gems among the films I got to translate for AleKino! and one that stands out (the only one I actually made a copy of) is a Norwegian short Oh, My God!. It's a hilarious memory flashback to childhood in the early 80s in Norway when obsession with sex and freer eroticism ran high and seduced preadolescent girls into a bizarre initiation ritual. Fascinated by nude magazines sporting snapshots of women in erotic poses and full of descriptions of ecstasy, a group of girlfriends, 12-year-old or so, are led by Charlene, a blond ringleader, into believing they can get an guaranteed orgasm if they follow her odd recipe that includes a tablespoon and a cup of warm water. At a secret sex convention in Charlene's pink-dominated room, one by one, they take the orgasm set, step into a wardrobe and within seconds start yelling in excitement, pretending to come. Under Charlene's terror, no participant dares call the bluff and the awkward session goes on until the main protagonist (and the narrator), at first sheepishly, then with outstanding cunning, decides to shock her girlfriends by outperforming them in ecstasy shrieks and seizures. She carries it out so convincingly that other girls, including the cheeky, fake Charlene, are stunned into doubting whether she possibly might have had a true orgasm, which instantly elevates her to the status of a teenage hero.

Based on a short story by Anna Bache-Wiig, it develops seemlessy with a narrator voice-over, which I adore, guiding a viewer through teenage vulnerabilities, perceptions and misperceptions with delicious irony and distance grown-ups can afford when looking back at the eventful, though compeletly illogical, times of early adolescence. For me, the film felt as if I'd just heard a friend of mine retelling me, over beer, another embarrassing memory of her as a 12-year-old and me bursting in laughter at the punchline, which I actually did.

Three other shorts that fell into my hands were OK, but it was much harder for me to identify with their content, style or subject matter. The South-Korean Rubout, telling a distressing story of the last phone call between a manager trapped in a train that is about to fall from a bridge and his wife, has even won a prize at the festival, but still failed to move me. So did the Norwegian Deconstruction workers, a meaning-of-life dialogue between a young builder and his older colleague at the construction site who conclude that it's best to accept life and its limitations as they are, and the Mexican Niño de mis ojos (The apple of my eyes), which I nonetheless enjoyed as an exercise in my budding Spanish.

¿Que haces? = Co robisz?
¿Necessito ajuda? = Potrzebujesz pomocy?
La Bamba by Los Lobos is a classic whose lyrics are often used in Spanish classes.

Here is what a meringue means in English.

Are you smarter than McCutcheon?

I wanted to see some UK game show and stumbled across Are you smarter than a 10-year-old?, a TV quiz that takes contestants back to school times and questions them on National Curriculum. It's great as a language resource and a window into the British culture. Its special charity edition introduced me to a UK celebrity of versatile talents and incredible beauty Martine McCutcheon, interviewed here by G2.

Shorts blown to smithereens (1)

On top of a number of feature films, AleKino! asked me to work on several shorts, some of which proved incredibly appealing.

Birth by Signe Baumane, here in her other funny animation, gave a fast-paced, light-hearted overview of the horrors a pregnant teenager has to go through in a backward community where all other women have to offer in terms of support are stories of personal hurt and disappointment. In less than a quarter of an hour the girl protagonist is dragged through her unexpected pregnancy, put down by her complaining mother, disillusioned, hysterical aunts and unsympathetic doctor, until she gives birth to a hellish, little boy who instantly has her enslaved. Neatly animated, the film ironically overblows the teenage fears and adult phobias towards babies and relationships that their arrival shapes. It may be a tad too gruesome for a very young audience and a degree of distance is necessary not to freak out at the sight of balooning pregnant bellies or zombie fetuses in medical charts.

Lots of excellent vocab:
1. noisy with cicadas, outside cicadas buzzed,
2. to tear at the seams,
3. to blow/smash a stereotype to smithereens (little pieces),
4. septic = ropiejący, a septic wound,
5. She pressed a baby to her bosom.
6. Immediately after birth, nurses give a baby a rinse,
7. delivery = poród,
8. "I know something, you don't know" kind of laugh,
9. the umbilical cord,
10. a pause of comprehension.

I let myself be enchanted by Aphrodite's Farm, a sweet New Zealand fable about a family milk farm somewhere at the foothills of Mount Taranaki (Egmont), whose dairy products are not only flavoursome, but also blessed with the magical qualities of prolonging life, improving health and enhancing talent. The bliss of this Maori household comes to an abrupt end when the head of the family dies of a heart attack, leaving his wife and three beautiful dauhthers helpless. To make matters worse, their plight gets compunded when Friday, a helping hand they hired to lift the farm from recession, takes a shining, fully requited, to one of the daughters. Little do they know that the milk potion, which their farm earns a living from, relies on a constellation of three virgin daughters for its extraordinary powers. Magical milk goes sour, its properties gone, Friday is banished and the farm declines further. Only to be reborn in 9 months' time when a newborn virgin repairs the ancient circle the ranch is based on.

1. Kia ora is a Maori greeting and one of key expressions that made their way to modern English, especially in New Zealand,
2. The farm was short-handed,
3. Horses refused to lift a hoof,
4. Absence makes the heart grow fonder,
5. foolhardy = szaleńczy, nierozstropny,
6. impetuos = zapalczywy, porywczy,
7. a lot of hard yakka = work,
8. the bloodline = pochodzenie
9. heal the infirm and cure the lame,
10. It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to say...
11. to get a big agro = get angry or hostile for no reason.

When I was a child, I spoke as a child

Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World had me running to the library to get more books on philosophy when I was 15 or so and, I hate to say it, it might shoulder some responsibility for me steering towards the humanities in later life. The book was stunning in the way it threw open giant philosophical questions teenagers start to feel strongly about and need some friendly exposure to. It was rich, but not suffocatingly so, in terminology that a 15-year-old mind is ready to soak in enthusiastically in an attempt to come to terms with first strong doubts.

I was doubly thrilled then when Ale Kino! commissioned me to translate Through a Glass, Darkly, a Norwegian production based on Gaarder's 1993 novel I haven't read. It's a multi-layered story of Cecilia, a vibrant 13-year-old girl who is doomed to prematurely die of cancer. The film traces her last days, which coincide with Christmas, when her touch with the world becomes compellingly intense and beyond what most ordinary people can experience. She daydreams a lot, transporting herself and the audience to her earlier days when, still unspoiled by the illness, she fell in love for the first time while on holiday in Spain. Edging nearer and nearer death as days go by, she begins to see Ariel the angel who seems to be there to soften her untimely transition. With her prognosis worsening and hopes of recovery practically disappearing, Cecilia, thanks to Ariel's heavenly assistance and teachings, gradually makes peace with her fate and finally - hand in hand with the angel - crosses the boundary between life and death.

It's a touching film, even more so if you watch it for the second time, as I had to, very carefully, scene after scene, in order to translate it. Its warmth and profound understanding of fragile human condition is hard to overrate, though some may criticize it for sentimentalism and blending different spiritual traditions into one. As for me, it wasn't annoying in the least and I see tangible value in Gaarder's modern-day reflection on difficult moral problems and everyday tragedies that people face irrespective of their material comforts or technological advancement. His inclusion of the Bible, with its enduring strength as a source of wisdom and contemplation, makes Though a Glass, Darkly both appealingly old-fashioned and plainly moving. It's the First Epistole to the Corinthians that provides the philosophical backbone to the story, with the title directly taken from it and a number of references throughout the film, and Gaarder deserves praise for reaching out to the classics to reestablish them in relation to life in the 21st century.

Language and ideas to remember:
1. bone marrow = szpik kostny,
2. a looking glass is another way to say a mirror,
3. hernia = przepuklina,
4. to tingle = to have prickling, stinging sensation (Her foot began to tingle, so she shifted her position),
5. hydrogen peroxide = a mild antiseptic (woda utleniona)

Out of the dark

Stonehenge, a British landmark in the middle of Salisbury Plain, plays host to the UK's druidic and pagan communities as they celebrate the winter solistice, the shortest day of the year after which the amount of sunshine gradually grows until the summer solistice, the longest day of the year. In a largely post-religious Britian, the events at Stonehenge attract a considerable audience from a general public, drawn by their percived spirituality and extraordinary ambience. Their appeal might be growing proportionately to the increasing commercialization of Christmas in the UK, which for most has lost its devotional basis.

Social class reclassified

While reading the latest report on the pre-election opinion polls and the sinking chances of the Conservatives to form an overall majority, rather than a hung parliament, I stumbled across the terms AB top social group, C1, C2 and the bottom DE group. It's clearly just another way to classify voters (or consumers) that comes as an alternative to the classic breakdown into upper, middle and working classes. It seems to have more to do with business research than academic sociology and is designed to direct products or advertising with greater precision. And since politics adapts rapidly to the demands of economic efficiency, it gladly resorts to the same, sharper, more analytical instruments businesses have at their disposal.

Crime stories

My interest in crime revived after a series of unexpectadly robust crime-and-punishment lessons for my ESL students. I was honestly taken aback by how enthusiastic people got about the topic which - in the end - seems rather distanced from their daily lives. As ususal, I was repeatedly caught red-handed by how-do-you-say type of questions and it inspired me to read more on crime, which is not difficult, if you consider how high it ranks with newspaper editors and readers. Here's a compilation of crime stories from different sources:
1) A teaching assitant stabbed to death by an angry chef.
2) A hit-and-run mother sent to mental institution following her diagnosis.
3) Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain's daughter granted a restraining order against her mother.

UK Christmas strikes plus snow chaos

In case you believed transport workers' strikes before Christmas were pitifully reserved for Poland, here's a report on how BA baggage handlers have caused chaos at Heathrow days before celebrations start.

Wintry conditions, for which British institutions and infrustructure aren't well cut out, tend to cause disruptions well beyond what is known in Poland.

The saga continued for a number of days, with a staggering increase in road accidents, widespread airport cancellations and delays and paralysing infrastructure problems, as the UK suffered from Arctic temperatures (of up to -16C in areas of Scotland) it is barely prepared for.

Poland makes headlines

Poland made headlines again when until now unidentified thieves stole a world-famous sign at the entrance to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Papers around the world turned their attention to Oświęcim, a town in the south of Poland, where the German extermination site was located and where the memorial is visited each year by thousands of visitors. I'm afraid a common perception of the Poles as a nation of crooks, petty and large-scale, is bound to get solidified after this disgraceful incident. Some press reactions the world over here, here, here and here.

The botched theft mastermind is now said to have come from Britain.

An American Vision

I stumbled across some clippings from the San Francisco Chronicle Magazine I tore away when I was in California in the summer of 2006 for the work and travel programme. The reason I stacked them away is because they featured an article on a French photographer Michelle Vignes, who continues to document American life from her base in SF. Her snapshots of the black community, which she has been tracing since the 60s with the special focus on music and musicians, and the American natives, revealing their age-old rituals and changing status, command the highest respect, both for her craftsmanship as a photographer and her thorough immersion in the cultures she portrays.

It came as no surprise to me, after seeing her shots, that she'd worked under the wings of Henri Cartier-Bresson for some time. Her photos, with their sensitivity, attention to cultural detail and insider's perspective, are evocative of style associated with Bresson and Magnum Photos.

Anxieties of a 5-year-old

In Morrison Gets a Baby Sister, another film I translated for AleKino!, the world turns upside down for a 5-year-old Morrison whose parents announce the arrival of his baby sister. This means sweeping changes in the boy's priviledged position at the centre of the family and sensing this unfavourable turn Morrison takes action. He goes on a series of unlikely adventures, stealing his dad's car, which he'd been trained to drive, and kidnapping his newly born sister. Distressed parents almost go out their mind and the village community is roused to its feet to join the desperate search for missing kids. Funnily, the most outstanding helper is a clumsy village police officer, who keeps chasing cars and tractors on his motocycle just to let them go free with a mild warning, whatever their offense. These's no doubt at any point that we're waiting for the happy end and it comes indeed with Morrison bravely reestablishing his position in the family and falling in love with his new sister.

Some good vocab:
1) cut the crap = cut the comedy,
2) threadbare tyres = worn tyres,
3) a hummingbird = koliber,
4) in a jiffy,
5) give a home birth

Gym or dog?

Here's an interesting piece from The Daily Mail on the latest research into physical exercise. The paper reports that walking a dog has a greater impact on bodily condition than going to the gym on a regular basis. Not only does a pooch require a twice-daily workout outdoors and the owner has no choice but to provide it, regardless of weather or mood, but it's also more enjoyable for people who see the gym as a crushing bore and an unbearably artificial setting. In fact, some readers commented that it's a standard procedure for cardiologists to recommend older patients to get a dog as part of their healthy lifestyle. There surely was a vocal backlash from gym lovers and workout pros arguing that walking a dog is nowhere near reaching levels of involvement needed for losing weight or engaging muscles, tendons or ligaments fully, but I don't think these scientific arguments may dissauade anyone from having a dog. A gym is just a gym, but there is much more than just a workout companion to a dog.

Some language to remember:
1) a free-for-all has a double meaning
2) a layabout = a bum
3) Plod = a slow-witted police officer
4) tendons = ścięgna
5) ligaments = wiązadła
6) a dumbbell = ciężarek
7) a bench is a basic piece of gym equipment
8) I tip my hat to... = Chylę czoło przed...

The noughties revisited

As 2009 and with it the decade draw to an end, the British papers start to compile ultimate rankings and charts for everything from political events to sport to every kind of art. Here's The Daily Telegraph setting out 100 defining cultural moments month after month and it sparkles with memories and catchphrase names and here's an umbrella site that collects a few review lists for 00s.

Other papers use this end-of-decade opportunity too. Interestingly, the Guardian ran a hands-on anthropology piece on what was lost or forgotten as ten years went by, with the cassettes topping the list. There's still good three weeks left until the end of December and I dread to think what comes next in The Guardian's series of the noughties flashbacks.

November overload

If the teaching season in full swing wasn't enough, November brings along a string of film translation jobs for the film festival AleKino!, incredibly enjoyable but time-consuming. In previous years I could barely manage to keep so many balls in the air and this resulted in a period of tense, undercooked lessons and some shoddy translations, but this year my discipline and time management got better and I retained high standards while remaining relatively relaxed. Still, I could find neither time nor energy to post entries on the blog, even though I had more to say than ever.

Let's try to make up for it by looking back at the past three-four weeks, in particular at the films I was commissioned to translate.

How often do you get to see a Latvian production? I had this rare opportunity with Little Robbers, a skillfully-told story of an ordinary Lativan family that finds itself in a pickle when the father loses his job, defaults on his mortgage and the bank mercilessly reposseses their house. Angered by this drastic turn of events, Robby (5) and his sister Louise (7) set out to help their troubled parents and draw up a scheme to rob the bank that took away their home. They nearly get away with the robbery, but eager security cameras record as they get out of rubbish bins, having first visited the vault, and leave the place with stolen cash. What they don't know is that most banknotes had been counterfeited by the bank employees.

The hapless team of security men and the bank manager, all of them involved in the counterfeiting fraud, rush off to chase them, ending up at their grandparents' farm where the poor family holds out in tough times. Through grandpa's cunning and Robby's bravery, all fraudsters get beaten up or caught in shameful circumstances and the police arrives to discover the extent of the bank fraud. In the happy end, Robby and Louise are given the award for their contribution to uncovering the rigging scheme at the bank and the family moves back to where they'd been evicted from.

Even though Robbers weren't designed for my age group, I enojoyed the charm of a simple story behind it (how topical it was in the bank-induced financial crisis) and its clear good-or-evil message that modern children are in a tremendous need to be exposed to. And the language - how often do you get to hear some beutiful Latvian?

To remember:
1_ This is a picklock and lock picking,
2_ Not a lot of people get to see a bank vault,
3_ When you have a puncture, you drive with flat tyres,
4_ A mutt is another way to say a mongrel dog,
5_ I'll box your ears = You'll get a good thrashing.