Pray For Peace, Train For War

Making a sophisticated satire isn't a one-day job. The authors believe it's always that simple to criticise something or someone without a second thought. No wonder Agnieszka Elbanowska, the director of Pray For Peace, Train For War, a parody about joining Poland's territorial defence force, lost herself in her project.

If other Polish comedies are fueled by shrewdness, Elbanowska’s work is the opposite. In a way, she infantilises an important main subject, which is supposed to function as a warning for future generations. Rather than a coherent narrative line, we follow the metaphysical journey of Tytus (Michał Sikorski), a young teenager dreaming of becoming a soldier. During the practical course, he will learn every “useful” skill to get himself prepared for war, even if one is not supposed to come soon. This simple premise tells it all: Elbanowska hits notes of defiant comedy, condemning the need to cultivate military service.

Though Tytus’ father (Juliusz Chrząstowski) is the colonel of the paramilitary group his son joins, the young man is treated as an outsider. The fact that he gets the nickname “Zero” is meaningful, as it does not help him to believe in himself and becomes a threat to his already vulnerable masculinity. When he meets Natalia (King Jasik), who immediately becomes his love interest, the emotional cocktail does not help him in finding his suppressed confidence but this coming-of-age element gives some additional charm.

Deeply rooted in Polish pop culture sayings, memes and common running jokes, Pray For Peace, Trrain For War might prove a challenge for an international audience, as it strongly relies on their knowledge of Poland. Because of no self-explanatory lines and dialogues, an unnerving feeling creeps in, implying we might be missing a lot.

This repression of the script is also palpable in the collective performance. And it's something readily spottable: it's difficult to avoid thinking how exactly the thespians’ expressiveness is detached from the on-screen reality. Echoing the way of the deliberate acting exaggeration, the performers offer the same abstract performances all over again. It suits the convention of vibrant dynamics, but it destroys the viewer's immersion. They all act like they've just entered the theatre's main stage, yet it's still the big screen we're watching them on.

Calling it a slog would be a compliment. It is worse than that, losing its momentum in cabaret-like sequences, and subduing the intriguing potential of themes such as entering adolescence and debating the crisis of masculinity, and forcing young men to join the army. All of this leads to the lack of clarity in the script. Too committed to making the audience laugh at the beginning, the director and her co-writer Łukasz Czapski forget to fully engage the viewers with its unusual premise. Like joining a conversation that started a while ago, watching Elbanowska’s comedy puts us in an annoying spot. We're involved, although we're really not.