- Actors: Richard Dormer, Paulina Chapko
- Director: Jerzy Skolimowski
- Disc Format: Color, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
- Language: Polish
- Subtitles: English
- Region: Region 1
- Number of discs: 1
- Rated: Unrated
- Studio: MPI HOME VIDEO
- DVD Release Date: August 16, 2016
- Run Time: 83 minutes
Approaching 11 Minutes with the goal of deciphering
the intended meaning will likely to lead to frustration, as Polish filmmaker
Jerzy Skolimowski has created a narrative with intentional ambiguity. Meaning
is subjective, and 11 Minutes is to
be approached an analyzed in the same way one might try and understand a poem.
Not everything seen must be taken literally, and not all of the images will
have the same meaning inferred by every viewer. It isn’t the plot points or the
characters which are indiscernible, so much as the themes and the larger
messages. Two people can watch this film and come to completely different
conclusions on what is being said by the film’s message, even if the characters
and events are themselves fairly straightforward.
The basic
premise for 11 Minutes is that we
follow a series of seemingly inconsequential moments in the lives of a number
of characters, all leading up to a connecting event at the end of the 11
minutes from the title. Most of these characters are not even given names,
because it is less about who they are than the domino effect caused by each of
their actions. At the forefront must be aspiring actress, Anna (Paulina
Chapko), as one of the key figures in the climax and among the few to have a name.
The problem is that she’s not a very developed character, at least not so much
that I ever understood her motivations.
Despite having
just married a violently possessive man (Wojciech Mecwaldowski), Anna goes to
the hotel room of a sleazy movie producer (Richard Dormer) who has obviously
nefarious motives. Anna doesn’t appear to be stupid, so her motives for being
in such a questionable situation are never apparent. Is she really just that
gullible, or is Anna willing to do whatever it takes to feed her narcissistic
desires for a career in show business? We never have the chance to find out,
because it turns out that her husband spiked her champagne with a sleeping pill
prior to the questionable casting session. As he rushes to the hotel to save
her from an unconscious violation, far too much of the film’s run-time focuses
on the producer’s obvious attempts at casting couch shenanigans.
These aren’t the
only slightly despicable characters within the narrative, which also include a
cocaine-addicted courier (Dawid Ogrodnik) who is nearly caught sleeping with
another man’s wife, a flirtatious hot-dog vendor (Andrzej Chyra) who was once a
teacher before being arrested for sleeping with a student, and a nervous young
man (Lukasz Sikora) with plans for a robbery. Some of the other characters just
seem incidental until the final moments, whether it is a group of nuns eating
lunch near the hotel, a trio of paramedics making an effort to help a pregnant
woman and dying man, or a window-washer at the hotel and his nearby girlfriend.
Then there are those that hardly seem connected at all, perhaps just existing
to enforce the larger ideas of Skolimowski’s narrative. This would be far
easier to analyze if I understood what these larger ideas were.
The movie begins
with a collection of personal videos, most captured on cell phone or laptop.
This combined with a series of moments involving surveillance video leads me to
believe that there is commentary in here about the self-centered nature of the
digital age, though I have not been able to decipher how it all connects. There
are strange inexplicable occurrences within the film which still have me
baffled. An airplane comes forebodingly close to the buildings repeated times
in the overlapping narrative, a bird inexplicably crashes into a mirror, dripping
water is subtly shown defying gravity by traveling backwards up a building, and
several of the characters see a spot in the sky that resembles a burned out
pixel on a computer screen. 11 Minutes
is the kind of film which would likely gain significance and meaning with
repeat viewings, though I’m not sure the rewards would be worth enduring the
cast of unredeemable characters a second time.
The only special
feature on the DVD release is a trailer for the film, which makes the film look
far more exciting than it is in reality.
Entertainment Value:
7.5/10
Quality of
Filmmaking: 7/10
Historical
Significance: 5.5/10
Special Features: 1/10
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