Ogniem i mieczem

[Max_the_Highlander]

This movie is excellent and really made by very talanted director but its pro-Polish bias is so obvious that its really strange to read contra-argumentation.
May be its not properly to difine this film as an anti-Ukrainian but on the whole it makes impression of a Polish propagande - mild, civilized but nevertheless a propagande...
From other side, if the same film was made in Ukraine I have no doubts we'd got vice versa - about astoundingly noble Ukrainians and angry mean Poles.
Sincerly - the movie is good but if you an Ukrainian there is no any wish to applaud when the light is on.

[Zbyszek]

Originally Posted by Max_the_Highlander

This movie is excellent and really made by very talanted director but its pro-Polish bias is so obvious that its really strange to read contra-argumentation.
May be its not properly to difine this film as an anti-Ukrainian but on the whole it makes impression of a Polish propagande - mild, civilized but nevertheless a propagande...
From other side, if the same film was made in Ukraine I have no doubts we'd got vice versa - about astoundingly noble Ukrainians and angry mean Poles.
Sincerly - the movie is good but if you an Ukrainian there is no any wish to applaud when the light is on.

I read the novel for the first time when I was 10.
I could not detach from this thing and it was so hard that I had no time for sleeping.
In fact, Sienkiewicz made thorough historic and geographic(!) studies before he dared touch the subject.
Sienkiewicz did not use the noun 'Ukrainian', he only referenced social groups like Cossacks, Jews, szlachta and Ukraine. I know he was right on this.
Primary domestic purpose of his novel was to bring up gloomy minds of Poles under foreign rule. I read the novel more than once and it never made me anti-Ukrainian.
In the past, history was usually described from the rulers' point of view. The Bosheviks tried to explain it the other way round. Sienkiewicz wrote his brilliannt Sienkiewicz wrote his "With Fire and Sword" more than 100 years ago.Sienkiewicz wrote his "With Fire and Sword" more than 100 years ago.
Sienkiewicz, like Gogol or Shevchenko were too outstanding to lower to propaganda.
The film was a difficult compromise between the bare text of Sienkiewicz and the complexity of today. Hoffman was talented and wise enough to keep a balance.

[Max_the_Highlander]

Originally Posted by Zbyszek

Sienkiewicz did not use the noun 'Ukrainian', he only referenced social groups like Cossacks, Jews, szlachta and Ukraine. I know he was right on this.
Primary domestic purpose of his novel was to bring up gloomy minds of Poles under foreign rule. I read the novel more than once and it never made me anti-Ukrainian.

No doubts, Sienkiewicz is another Polish genius... Cant argue on this because I never read the original text of novel... but if his task was to "bring up the gloomy minds of Poles under foreign rule" he made it perfectly...
On the whole, Hoffman used rather poor stereotypes of Hollywood... there are good guys and there are bad guys... and they fight to the end while the angelic good will overcome the monsterous evel...then the sun goes down and a hero kisses his girlfriend...
Guess which ones are Ukrainians?