spacetime coordinates: set in an alternate timeline in which the fall of the communist Polish People’s Republic never happened, and the Iron Curtain is still in place. / set in 2003; a coordinated terrorist attack on multiple sites took place in Poland in 1983 which altered the course of history and the Cold War did not end.
1983 was particularly appreciated by critics for its photography and atmosphere. The directors create a gloomy and cold Warsaw, where old Soviet-style apartment blocks stand side by side with futuristic and imposing government and police buildings, equipped with the most modern instruments of control. The secret services of the SB now use computer surveillance mechanisms, tracking cell phones and digitizing citizens’ data (classified according to their “level of danger”).
Society is run by the “Party”, a privileged elite who enjoy a good education and excellent economic status. The rest of the population is disinterested in politics and devote themselves to consumerism, at least as regards those goods that are not censored or prohibited. Opposing this system is the “Brigade of Light”, a group of young people who carry out resistance to the dictatorship in clandestinity.
Poland is then imagined to have seen massive immigration from Indochina, and in particular from the socialist republic of Vietnam. Some night scenes – set in overcrowded Asian neighborhoods – seem like a reference to the Blade Runner movie.
It is curious that there are very few explicit references to communism in the series (no statue of Lenin in the streets, no red star or revolutionary chant). The regime appears to have created an Orwellian state, whose sole ideological goal is the suppression of dissent and the control of individuals.
In this sense, it seems that directors are making a more general criticism of any form of totalitarianism, police regime and society-induced conformism. Agnieszka Holland herself underlines how the contents of 1983 are also current in Western countries, in contingency with the current crisis of democracy and the emergence of what the director describes as “a conservative counter-revolution”. She says in the same interview with The Guardian: “But the real questions are: maybe these people are happy? Maybe freedom is overrated?” (wiki)
1983 is a Polish crime drama streaming television series created and written by Joshua Long and based on an original idea by Long and Maciej Musiał, produced for and released by Netflix on 30 November 2018. A second season is being considered.
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