Far away from the present: Magical realism in Polish film

Magical realism is usually divided into two variants: the older European, non-magical variety (relying on defamiliarization), and the more recent, Latin American strand (over-familiarizing the supernatural, and resorting to myth and folklore). Definitions of magical realism in film are mostly construed as parallel to literary and artistic ones, influenced by the Latin American understanding of the convention. The article argues that Polish magical realist films predominantly express an interest in the long-lost, idealized past, showing nostalgic pictures either of rural life, implicitly contrasted with modern soulless civilization (J.J. Kolski), or of a pre-war multicultural Poland wiped out by the apocalypse of World War II (Has, Konwicki, Wajda). However, in contrast to world movies, few Polish films use magical realism to analyse the present, and fewer still employ its defamiliarized variant. These omissions might be explained by the pressure of the realistic convention, difficult to reduce in film, or by the specifically Polish nostalgia, marking the lack of interest in analysing contemporary reality.