Groby, klątwy, duchy. Obrazy i narracje (także) żydowskiego świata w dwóch polskich filmach

In this paper are compared two films released three years apart: Pokłosie (directed by Władysław Pasikowski, 2012) and Demon (directed by Marcin Wrona, 2015), both of which were made in the wake of the ‘discovery’ of the crimes committed by Poles during World War II and the social and psychological effects of this revelation. It is not the author’s intention here to discuss the perennial issue of Polish antisemitism or to offer another review of these two films, about which much (or a great deal, at least in the case of Pokłosie) has already been written, but rather to attempt to identify their common narrative elements and to verify to what extent elements of Jewish or Jewish-Polish narrative tradition are present in two works with (also) Jewish themes by Polish filmmakers. These include, among others: the figure of the visitor, or ‘messenger’ from afar, through which the plot unfolds; the ghost of the dead who lurks in the unsuspecting visitor and destroys him because of the sins committed by the previous generation; the gathering of passive/co-operative witnesses, indispensable in the story. Certainly, these are not topoi that belong exclusive to one culture or another, but which in some respects characterise them and can be articulated in a common discourse, inside and outside the narrated plot.