The Wedding

In Poland, Stanislaw Wyspianski's verse play The Wedding carries huge historical resonance. First performed in 1901, it deals with the provincial wedding of a peasant girl to an urban poet, at which the guests encounter dramatic figures from Poland's tortured past - a wise court jester, the Black Knight, a ghostly peasant who led a revolt against the gentry in 1848, and so on. Particular significance is attached to a golden horn - a symbol of national mission - that goes missing in the increasingly frenzied proceedings. Wajda goes for all of this with full romantic abandon. The camera swings wildly like a drunken wedding guest, the actors cast caution (and verse speaking) to the winds, and there is a great deal of blood and smoke. Whether you find this bewildering or exhilarating depends on your sympathies for such an extreme approach to a nation's artistic sensibility.