Lesley Manville Goes to Poland in Kasia Adamik’s ‘Winter of the Crow’

Lesley Manville travels to 1981 Poland in Kasia Adamik’s “Winter of the Crow.” 

Premiering at TIFF and then closing San Sebastián, it’s based on Nobel and Booker Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk’s short story about a British professor who finds herself in the middle of unrest caused by the introduction of martial law. It debuts clip here:

“I was young, but I remember these events in Poland. My character, Joan, goes there to give a lecture and she’s caught up in something she knows nothing of. It’s hard to imagine, isn’t it? You’re thrown into this kind of political chaos in a country that isn’t your own, where you’re not familiar with anything or anybody,” says Manville.

Soon, Joan ends up on the run with young radicals. 

“I’d be horrified if I turned up to do a professional engagement and was treated like poor Joan is. She thinks she’ll be staying in a nice hotel and be treated with the respect she demands. There’s some humor in her being put in these places and driven around in a beaten-up car.”

With the whole country effectively shut down, she can’t escape. Witnessing terrible atrocities, she gets “sucked into the cause,” says the actor, joined in the film by Zofia Wichłacz, Andrzej Konopka, Sascha Ley and Tom Burke. 

“She ends up wanting to help and bring back photographic evidence of what’s been going on. Joan is not uncaring, but she leads a life that’s about her own pursuits and pleasures. When you see her being moved by the plight of those involved with the Solidarity [the anti-Communist social movement led by Lech Wałęsa], it’s quite rewarding.” 

Manville, Oscar-nominated for “Phantom Thread” – is “the actor who seeks out something different,” she states. Recently, she turned heads with her turn in Luca Guadagnino’ “Queer” as a drug-positive doctor living in the middle of a jungle.  

“I’ve never been a ‘personality actor.’ I want to play characters that don’t resemble me. ‘Queer’ was extreme, but what joy it was to work with Luca and Daniel Craig. When I show up there, it becomes another film. They enter a strange existence. It’s the same here, because you think it’s going to be about a woman giving a lecture and then this enormous part of Polish history happens on the night she arrives.”

Throughout her career, Manville has earned raves for her collaborations with Mike Leigh, dating back to “Grown-Ups” in 1980. But she doesn’t bring his method of working – no script, improvisation, developing detailed character’s background – to other sets. 

“I would never do that. There’s no point in me going to all these filmmaking giants like Luca Guadagnino, Paul Thomas Anderson or Joel Cohen, whom I’m currently working with [on ‘Jack of Spades’], and say: ‘Well, Mike Leigh does it like this, so…’  It would be an insult. But it lives in my bones, my work with him,” she admits. 

“When I have a script, that’s my map of the world and that’s what I have to honor. But I started working with Mike when I was 22, so that legacy goes on inside me. I try to choose my work carefully so that I’m always having a rich time. Working with Kasia was one of those experiences.”

Produced by Olga Chajdas, Stanisław Dziedzic, Katarzyna Ozga, Nicolas Steil and Samantha Taylor, “Winter of the Crow” is sold by HanWay Films.

Despite referencing an important moment in Polish history, Kasia Adamik wanted to keep things universal and slightly elevated, inspired by 1947 “Odd Man Out” where a wounded man escapes and “his feverish state distorts the world.” But she still added blink-and-you-will-miss-it details including a homage to photographer Chris Niedenthal, known for documenting communist period in the country.

“Only a Polish audience will spot it, but it’s great to have these iconic images. Niedenthal’s photo of a cinema playing ‘Apocalypse Now’ while the apocalypse is happening on the streets, the carp in the bathtub, the girl who wants to watch cartoons in the morning but [political leader] General Jaruzelski is on TV. Which actually happened to me and I was very upset,” she laughs. She was only nine years old when Jaruzelski declared martial law. 

“Many of my collaborators, especially Polish, were keen to be as close to realism as possible. I wanted it to be very subjective. It’s not a real story about somebody that really lived through those times.” Instead, it’s a story about an outsider. Which is something Adamik understands very well.

“I wasn’t raised in Poland in those times. I was raised in France and then lived in L.A. It gives me more freedom, because I’m not worried about making one country angry. I’m not a slave to popular opinion.” Adamik is the daughter of veteran director Agnieszka Holland, exec producing the film and also heading to TIFF with “Franz.”

In Tokarczuk’s story, transformed into a script by Sandra Buchta, Adamik and Lucinda Coxon, “not understanding the rules makes you question things and, at the same time, not question things.” 

“It was so acutely original, the fact that martial law and this moment was seen from a point of view of somebody who’s oblivious to the political situation and not interested in it – which is also very relevant today,” says Adamik. 

Exploring the differences between the East and the West, she plunges Joan into a totalitarian nightmare. “I wanted to show it to people who’ve never experienced it. Not as a warning, but as something to think about. How does a totalitarian country look, what does it feel like? You live in a Kafkaesque world and the rules, even if they are there, are not really rules.”

Manville’s participation and Tokarczuk’s name helped to develop the film described by Adamik as an “anti-Cold War non-thriller.”

“I noticed that people had no idea what happened in Poland at the time. They had no clue. Another difficulty was the fact that we don’t always understand what the plot is because Joan doesn’t understand it either. She’s lost in it,” she points out, praising Manville. 

“She’s a beast. With just one look or one movement she can make things almost comedic. Olga Tokarczuk also has this lightness to her. Even when she talks about grave subjects, there’s absurd humor in it.”

But Joan does end up caring in the end, underlines Manville.

“You think this woman is not going to be penetrated by any sort of emotion. She’s not going to be moved. And then she is. Joan realizes she needs to do this small thing that is a big thing for the people she’s doing it for. That’s her saving grace.” 

She adds: “We’re living in such extraordinarily brutal times. When you juxtapose that existence in post-war Poland with today’s situations, it’s shocking to see how little we’ve moved on. It really resonates with what’s happening, still.”