In her pre­vi­ous doc­u­ment­ary film Marta Minorow­icz observed the cre­ation of the bond between an eld­erly man liv­ing in the wil­der­ness of Bieszczady Moun­tains and his grand­son. In “A Piece of Sum­mer” the cam­era encap­su­lated the man and his emo­tions. Equally, or even more intim­ate is the atmo­sphere of her next doc­u­ment­ary “Decres­cendo”, in which the viewer is a wit­ness to the relation-​building between the res­id­ents of the rest home and their younger vis­it­ing psy­cho­lo­gist Tomek. Find­ing one’s way in and part­ing with life, youth and old age, the will of exist­ence and the accept­ance of time passing – these are the ant­onyms that char­ac­ter­ise this remark­able film.

The open­ing scenes of “Decres­cendo” por­tray eld­erly people. Within this fea­ture of the weary and much-​experienced faces a young and fresh one sud­denly appears – it belongs to Tomek, who works at the rest home as a psy­cho­lo­gist. The man’s great com­mit­ment and input into his work is notice­able from the very begin­ning; one could even assume he does it out of pure pleas­ure. Tomek talks to the eld­erly res­id­ents with ease, not dis­reg­ard­ing their most pecu­liar words or ideas, and he treats every one of them in an indi­vidual man­ner. He addresses them by their name and tries to divide his time equally between all that seek his atten­tion. Tomek plays cards with a res­id­ent, reads a news­pa­per to another one, he talks with one woman about grand­chil­dren and friend­ship, and about flowers with a dif­fer­ent one, and prac­tices the hands move­ments with a bal­let artist. The last one men­tioned, on the one hand, accepts the pro­cess of passing, and, on the other, still lives in the past; he used to be suc­cess­ful as a dan­cer, and now he walks with crutches. The man asks Tomek a ques­tion that no one can answer: Why? Why was he – a dan­cer — so pain­fully exper­i­enced and lost con­trol over his own body? He also asks Tomek what such a young per­son like him is doing in a place like that, if he could choose dif­fer­ently. The psy­cho­lo­gist replies: “The beauty of a con­ver­sa­tion does not depend on the beauty of the inter­locutor.”


But the viewer also won­ders why a per­son like Tomek chose to work in a rest home. The exag­ger­ated care of his looks that Tomek takes sub­stan­tially con­trasts with the image of passing. How­ever, pay­ing atten­tion to his looks does not pre­vent the man from focus­ing on another per­son. In one moment he powders his nose and adjusts the glasses, and in the other he listens intently to someone pour­ing their heart out, and he gives them advice. Even the New Year’s Eve he decides to spend in the com­pany of the rest home’s res­id­ents, and it seems that he has a good time. Extremely uplift­ing is the fact that the young psy­cho­lo­gist behaves as if he really was happy hav­ing those people around. His beha­vior does not give away a trace of irrit­a­tion, or the demo­tiv­at­ing aware­ness of sac­ri­fice. Clearly he can appre­ci­ate the value of the eld­erly people’s com­pany and he learns from it. Marta Minorow­icz has depic­ted the man who opposes the dom­in­ant trends that neg­ate the exist­ence of old age and death. Although the young psy­cho­lo­gist is a sup­porter of the cult of youth and takes care of his looks, he decides on the reg­u­lar con­tact with passing, ugli­ness, sad­ness, bit­ter­ness and the feel­ing of unful­fil­ment and rejec­tion.


Marta Minorowicz’s doc­u­ment­ary film raises asso­ci­ations with the fic­tion film “Before Twi­light” (dir. Jacek Blawut, 2008), which tells the story of the res­id­ents of the Senior Act­ors’ Home. In both cases the people pushed out from the arena of life find its sparkle anew when there is a goal before them. Whereas for Jacek Blawut’s act­ors the goal is to pre­pare and stage a play, for the res­id­ents of the rest home from Marta Minorowicz’s film the moment to look for­ward to is the con­ver­sa­tion with Tomek. It is extremely import­ant to them that someone out of their world, young and ener­getic, pays atten­tion and devotes his time to them. It is the greatest gift that can be given to them.


Marta Minorow­icz has shown yet again that she pos­sesses a great doc­u­ment­ary tal­ent and sens­it­iv­ity. The frames from “Decres­cendo”, such as of the man look­ing at his mobile phone through the mag­ni­fy­ing glass, or of the swinging legs of a per­son on a rock­ing chair sug­gest that she skil­fully observes real­ity and cred­ibly depicts its frag­ment.



By Olga Słowiakowska

(Trans­lated by Agnieszka Mruk)


(20.05.2011)