The Writer's Poke

What stands out to me is how the ending is changed. In the screenplay, Magda watches from her apartment as the Landlady pulls down the screen to Tomek's room. There's no closure. In this version, Tomek has finally returned to work at the post office. Magda has been waiting for his return, and when she sees him, she pauses, goes inside, stands, smiles slightly. It's an awkward, somewhat "tense" moment. You think Tomek might run away again, but he stays in his seat, and they look at each other. Finally, he breaks the silence, letting her know that he's done peeping at her. Is she disappointed? Maybe. She has "fallen in love with him," or that's perhaps what we're supposed to gather when she answers the phone and tells the silence at the other end that "You were right." Was it Tomek on the end or someone else? It doesn't matter, really. What matters is that Magda's view of love has changed. She didn't believe in love, and n...

Dorota (Krystyna Janda) is mean and nobody likes her. Actually, her husband likes her. He thinks they're having a baby. Her lover also likes her. He tells her so on the phone, but she's already put the phone down and doesn't hear him. When I asked my Humanities students if they felt empathy or judgement for Dorota and the Doctor, it was unanimous. They all felt empathy for the Doctor, but they also felt judgement for Dorota. Maybe I shouldn't have presented the question as either/or. Maybe we can feel both at the same time, just as Dorota tells the Doctor that it's possible to love two men at the same time.  Actually, the class didn't have much time to discuss and think about the question. If they had had more time, I bet more students would start to feel empathetic. Dorota really wants to be a mother, for example. Anyone would be empathetic for that. She's even willing to sacrifice that want if her husband lives. The judgement comes in, of course, because s...

Computers are programmed by human beings. As such, the answers they provide are only as good as their programming. In the film, Pavel is a good programmer. As far as we know, the information he puts into the computer program was solid. Pavel's dad not only re-checked the data, but he also went out onto the lake himself to make sure with his own eyes.  In other words, he did his due diligence, and he wasn't blinding accepting that the computer was right or that the lake was safe. And the lake actually was safe, at least the night before the accident.  We never learn why the ice cracks. We know that it should have held 3 times Pavel's weight, but we're not 100% sure how many people were on the lake at the same time the day of the accident, or if Pavel and his dad added the necessary data to take into complete account the fact that the stream entered the lake. Although Pavel's dad warned his son not to get too close to where the stream entered the lake, maybe the ...