Moonlighting

In Moonlighting, the Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski quietly tells the story of a group of Polish workmen's stay in London, all while General Jaruzelski seizes power in Poland in a coup and inaugurates what was to become several years of military dictatorship.

Jeremy Irons plays the Pole Nowak, the only one of the four who understands and speaks English. The other workmen are played by Polish actors, whose language TV1000 unfortunately did not take the trouble to subtitle. It was not strictly necessary, though.

The Poles have one month to completely renovate a house in a London suburb for a bigwig in their homeland, who can make money by hiring his countrymen illegally, for although he promises them high wages, it is nothing compared with what English workmen would have demanded.

The workmen have not been in England long before Nowak gets wind of the military coup, but he chooses to keep his colleagues in the dark. He is probably afraid that they will not finish the job, but one may ask oneself whether the workmen even have an employer after the coup. Nowak's countrymen do not catch the scent that anything is wrong. At most they wonder why the phone lines to their homeland suddenly stop working.

The film's most memorable and amusing passages illustrate Nowak's attempts to make the money for food and amusements stretch. He develops an improbably cheeky way of shoplifting. It very nearly goes wrong, but at a critical moment luck is on Nowak's side. Although the story is told at a leisurely pace, it is never boring.

When the workmen are on their way to the airport after finishing the job, Nowak finally pulls himself together and tells them the truth. The film ends with the Polish workmen's great outburst of rage.

Moonlighting can be seen as an allegorical tale with many layers. First, it tells of the oppression and exploitation of the poor by the rich. At the same time it is also a political film, in that it deals with the coup in the director's homeland.