Forgotten Love
[Foreign film]
Netflix
Synopsis:
Forgotten Love is a pre-war Polish epic that belongs in the company of Les Misérables, Dr. Zhivago, and Gone with the Wind, to name a few of the grand stories that depict love, its loss, its renewal, and the effects it has over generations of families and countries.
The story is about a surgeon in pre-WWI Poland, Profesor Rafal Wilczur, who seems to be living a good life: wife, and a young daughter whom he dotes passionately. Then one night he is mugged, nearly beaten to death. He survives but with absolutely no memory of his past life, his family his friends or his professional colleagues. He somehow finds himself as Antoi Kosiba, a peasant nobody in the rural regions of Radom, far from his home in Warsaw.
The story unfolds with numerous subplots painting the superstitious backwardness of rural Poland and the social strata of the people, particularly the rural agrarians. It is engaging to see how bias, social prejudice and ancient superstitions persisted in a nation on the path to modernity.
Certain mishaps and agricultural accidents put our surgeon into a position of assisting and word of his successful assistance spread. However, he still has no memory of how he knows to do the medical process he undertakes.
At the story’s beginning, his family life was not as good as he believed. His wife runs off with his beloved daughter to live in some rural backwoods. He knows nothing of the details. The daughter is raised and eventually decides to venture away to live an independent life.
Our plots weave together, surgeon and daughter to a point, the climax of the movie, the surgeon is brought to trial for practicing ‘quackery,’ somewhat like witchcraft, practicing medical procedures without the proper credentials. The surgeon is sentenced to prison. The story is not finished.
Richard says
Forgotten Love is an old-fashioned romantic tale very much worth its 2-hour running time. Why? Because of its pastoral views of Polish society, because of the garish display of social stratification even in so-called democratic modern Poland, because of the obvious pleasantry of watching people helping people and because of the love stories that thread their way through the story.
The actors are solid in their roles: Leszek Lichota as the lead, Maria Kowalska as his daughter, and many secondary actors/roles.
The movie title was changed from the original, “Znachor powraca” meaning Quackary returns. It was translated to Forgotten Love to make it more acceptable to the English-speaking market.
In short
This is a feel-good movie, well filmed, well-scened, well acted and well told. You’ve seen the like before but it is the kind of tale, filmed nicely, that makes you feel good at having watched it.
This is a very enjoyable movie because of its pastoral scenes, its warm depiction of rural Polish culture and its well acted portrayals by every cast member.
I would definitely watch this movie again.
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VIEWABILITY: 4.8 / 5
